


The Antique Roman

by SorrySorrySorry



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Bad Parenting, Corn - Freeform, Multi, Pre-Canon, high school age teens, its like a prologue but all modernish and theres farm crops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2018-12-13 23:26:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 51,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11770644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SorrySorrySorry/pseuds/SorrySorrySorry
Summary: Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions. Horatio has always been there for him. Ophelia has always appreciated his late night poetry. They have always carried on as usual. Nothing unusual should happen this year, either.





	1. Denmark's Worst

He wasn’t particularly the tallest, the most foreboding, had the widest shoulders or the darkest eyes, the squarest jaw--there were plenty of people in town who had all of those traits at the same time--hell, Laertes had all of those traits at the same time--but Hamlet was in impolite, indirect phrasing, fragile; conversely, to be polite, and obvious, he was princely, so it was a wonder to Horatio how he constantly heard the same feedback: “He’s kind of scary, isn’t he?”

To which Horatio constantly offered the same response: “Is he?”

On this, one of many occasions of that happening, he found himself staring at the prince, emerging from the family Mercedes. His mother followed after him, straightening his tie and making a fuss over something or another on his blazer. He noticed Horatio and waved as about a dozen other taller, more terrifying individuals bobbed in a crowd around him. A handful of them stopped to give him the once over when they thought he wasn’t looking, when the fact of the matter was that he was actively avoiding eye contact.

“There’s just something about him,” Osric had mumbled, his interest soon diverting to Laertes’ arrival at the school gate. “Something kind of...a little, sort of...too...solemn for a high schooler? A little too somber. Or stern, maybe. Grave.” His words dissolved into simple synonyms, and before Horatio could reply to any of them, he was gone.

“Grave?”

Hamlet had approached almost in perfect substitution for the lost company, his bag slung over his shoulder. He hadn’t gotten any taller over the summer and found himself now looking up at Horatio, who had suffered a painful amount of conversations with the elderly in his life about how he had grown like a weed.

“What’s grave? Or whose, I suppose? I don’t know the context.”

Horatio rubbed the back of his neck, finding himself unsurprised but disappointed at the prospect of having to look down at the prince to meet his eyes now. “Just small talk. It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I noticed your mother was in top form this morning.”

“Every year, no matter how many first days I go through. I think she fears the tabloids will catch it if she misses a year. ‘Gertrude King Neglects Budding Heir’, in fabulously red text. Can you imagine?”

“I can’t.”

“I’d demand a t-shirt of it.”

The two shared their first laugh of the semester, quiet and quieter still in comparison to the bustle of people moving from the street to the building behind them. As with every year, Horatio noticed Gertrude slipping gracefully back into the car, watching Hamlet through the window for a moment with a sort of practiced maternity before pulling away. At some point, they had stopped meeting eyes, shortly after the point where Hamlet had stopped waving good-bye. He turned away from the street without so much as a thought to the matter, ushering Horatio along with a nod, walking as close as prying eyes would allow. Their hands brushed as they neared the main set of doors, growing further apart once inside. 

“I missed you these past few weeks,” Horatio mumbled, aware of every body shifting around them, every ear that might possibly be turned in their direction. “It’s good to have you back.”

Hamlet had to look up at him again. There was something about having him look up that perhaps would be worth getting used to, its charm found in the slight tilt of the prince’s head; truly fragile, as impolite as it was a descriptor. He smiled in the sort of way that Horatio selfishly knew only he would experience so frequently. “It’s good to be back,” he said.

“And how did the recital go?”

“As well as all the others. I told mother I’m quitting this year, though. You should come to a recital before I retire, I’ll play something for your sake rather than hers.”

“I didn’t know you hated piano.”

Hamlet sighed deeply, and with a good portion of himself. He seemed to look ahead of himself to judge the number of stairs ahead of them. At the first step, he gave his response. “I don’t, I just happened to be thinking while we were abroad. The night of the recital, I walked out on stage, two or three people took the usual photographs from the usual spots, and I sat down, looking out for a moment at where the judges usually sit, and do you know what I saw beyond them? I saw Mother, sitting there, with her usual expression. The one she always has when I do things correctly. So, instead of playing Shostakovich’s piano concerto number two, opus 102, second section, adante, I played the third, allegro. It went swimmingly, of course, because I’m not an imbecile, but when I looked out to see her face after the change, thinking she’d be at least partially livid, it was the same! If anything, she looked even more pleased, as if this was somehow her accomplishment.

“The piece, after that, seemed to go on forever, and--not to sound unbearable--after, the applause seemed to go on forever, too. I was livid, Horatio, and I used all of the time thinking to myself, what could I possibly do to end this cycle of things carrying on as they usually do? What could I do to make that woman absolutely disgusted with me? So, on the return trip home, I told her I’d like to quit piano, that it simply isn’t worth my time any more, and if she didn’t let me quit, I’d start to play as poorly as possible until she did.”

The two reached the top of their second section of stairs at the last syllable. “What did she say to that?” Horatio murmured, unable to picture the unpleasantness of Gertrude King, having never experienced any real life examples.

Apparently needing a moment to breath, Hamlet moved to the window, leaning against it and meeting Horatio’s eyes again. He brushed a hand through his hair, likely undoing any fixes his mother might have made to his head’s arrangement earlier that morning. His face had begun to flush from his recollection of the recital’s turmoil. “She pursed her lips, gave me a rather long, unblinking stare, and said that we’d have to discuss it at length at a proper time. As if the plane ride home wasn’t proper enough. As if we’d need to be on the ground for any sort of conversation regarding my future. And then she suggested that I might get a haircut soon. Having my hair in my eyes doesn’t suit me.”

“It suits you.”

“And I’ve decided piano doesn’t.”

Horatio considered a response, only to lose it in favor of a simple nod. Having been complacent to the prince’s decisions for so long, he’d lost track of whether or not he actually agreed with them. Whatever it took to continue receiving smiles, he reasoned, as they were becoming a rare commodity with all the time that had passed since they were children. 

They moved again down the hall, now in silence, fast approaching the unbreachable noise of the classroom at the end of the hall. A selection students hovered around outside the door, and upon seeing the prince, returned to the interior. Again, the topic of Hamlet’s scariness rang around in Horatio’s head, the source of the idea still evading him. He tucked it away as best he could, but failed to turn his attention to his surrounding in time to avoid an inevitable, yearly ritual--Hamlet was quickly engulfed by the boldest group of girls in the room, each claiming to have sat next to him in such-and-such class the year before. It wasn’t as if Horatio didn’t receive at least a bit admiration himself, though the fascination of him being The Prince’s Friend wore off quickly after he gave the very clear impression that he didn’t care for the company of anyone else. Hating it, accepting it nonetheless, he took a seat at the front, Hamlet finding the seat behind him as quickly as possible while still humoring his unwanted entourage. What was entirely amazing was how little it took to humor them. 

Indeed, Hamlet had his role down to a science. Individual greetings. Unfamiliar People Smile. Generic fact about his summer. Downplay of achievements. Unfamiliar People Smile. ‘Let’s do our best this year’. Careful avoidance of potential date invitation. Put one earbud in. Conclusive Good-bye Smile. Avoidance of further eye contact. Light tug on Horatio’s cardigan. “I told them I have plans with you after school.”

“That’s fine,” said Horatio, as per the routine. It was always fine.

“I told them we were going to read and discuss  _ Anna Karenina,  _ but I’d also like to get entirely wasted if that’s alright with you.”

“It is.” It wasn’t, but it also wasn’t a matter Horatio could see himself arguing properly, especially not in a scenario where there were so many people around.

As if in thanks, or in confirmation, Hamlet squeezed the bit of cardigan in his hand, letting the moment last for as long as he could reasonably allow it to go on before anyone began to notice. Horatio blushed, forgetting whether or not this was another yearly occurrence, whether or not he’d lost the teacher’s first words every year for the same reason. Hamlet’s hand on his back, then drifting away from it. 

Horatio sat in the front for fear that someone might look back and see his face at times like these, times where his reactions would easily unravel into something he was positive he wasn’t supposed to show in public, especially not in a place where the steeple of an old church was visible from the right window. 

Denmark county. First in the country in cornfield demon sightings, second in orchard related tourism. Odd as it was to consider, the latter was because of Hamlet’s family making money off of the people curious about the former. Supposed demons had essentially provided enough of a gimmick for them to rise above the likes of the usual midwestern middle class onto a pillar in which calling the prince a prince no long seemed out of place within a community where it was acceptable for one to ride their horse to the grocery store. The steeple visible from the school was far from what Horatio considered to be the town’s worst qualities. In fact, there was something of a ranking going on in his head, a ranking where cornfield demons came in third. As he stared out the window, dozing a bit, he decided they might need to move down to fourth, given he’d never actually seen one.

Still mentally on the subject the moment lunch rolled around, aided by the quick passage of time involved in that level of interior consideration, Horatio found himself musing on it aloud. “What would you rank as the very worst thing about Denmark?”

Hamlet looked up from the salad he’d been picking apart, tomatoes now fully separate from the lettuce blend, which would soon be entirely separate from the larger shavings of cheese. He removed the earbud he’d had in for a majority of the morning. “Out of anything?” he said.

“Anything, yeah.”

The earbud softly played the finale of Saint-Saëns’ ‘Le Carnaval des Animaux’, finding its end before bleeding into Greenday. Hamlet bit his lip, looking out at the same steeple that had inspired the thought. “I like it well enough.”

“Really?”

“No, this place is an absolute shithole. I’ll show you what I rank as the worst, stand up.”

Horatio did as he was told, inspiring the couple of stares from people who were in such a position to stare and report the lunchtime eccentricities to those around them who wouldn’t be caught doing something so rude. Ignorant or uncaring, Hamlet dodged around desks with Horatio in tow, leading him to the window framing the steeple. He pointed the a field visible far in the distance beyond it. “I feel as if no matter how far I ran, how fast, or for how long, I would never reach the edge,” he said. “I feel--”

“--Trapped.” The word came long before the realization that it had come from Horatio, who noticed only when he caught Hamlet staring in interest, unused to be interrupted. “Sorry, it’s just as if...Denmark’s a prison, I guess? If that’s what you’re going for.”

“It is. It’s even better you said it. As it stands now, I’m running the risk of sounding overdramatic.”

They shared a long stare out the window, eyes training on the horizon. “It doesn’t sound overdramatic when I say it?” Horatio said quietly, trying to picture himself at the edge of the field; he couldn’t.

“No, you have a nice voice for statements like that. Like someone out of old roman literature.”

“Which sort, Brutus or Antony?”

“That depends on whether or not you take me for Caesar or Cassius.”

“I’d have to think on it.”

Before he was given the chance to laugh about it, Horatio became acutely aware of his surroundings again. Fifteen pairs of ears, three pairs of eyes, at least one conversations regarding the nature of their conversation. Hamlet’s gaze had drifted from the window to the ground, and he now fiddled with his bangs, apparently having taken the same inventory for himself. Was he supposed to be scary?

Lunch passed quickly after the conversation’s end, tomatoes separated and uneaten, and Horatio could hear the beginning of ‘Clair de Lune’ before Hamlet put his earbuds in, the both of them this time. All that would be gone from his world was the repeated clarification of the different points on such-and-such syllabus, the whispers of the students around him who found the points unreasonable, and eventually, the squeak of the door opening slowly, but suddenly. He wouldn’t miss his name, the interruption to the class serendipitously saying it out loud at the music’s quietest point, near its conclusion. His head turned to the intruder in the same way every else’s turned to him, and he collected his things without so much as a change in expression, though it was unusual in his history of first days to be called out into the hall.

From that point, the whispers could scarcely quiet down for any sort of syllabus to be considered, as the prince did not return.


	2. Balloon Animal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions. 
> 
> And tonight is taco night.

**Hey I’m here to meet you at the gate** _,_ sent 3:00 PM

 ** _aaaah creepy (; 0, □ 0, )//_** , sent 3:00 PM

 **Really sorry, but I need to use you as an excuse if that’s ok** _,_ sent 3:01 PM

 ** _excuse ?? dude what_** _,_ sent 3:01 PM

 **Please just pretend you invited me to walk home with you.  
** **Sorry.** _,_ sent 3:01 PM

 _**did you and hamlet get lonely?** , _sent 3:02 PM

 **Hamlet left earlier and I don’t know why and he invited me over**  
**for later but I don’t know if that still stands when he**  
**leaves early and I’m worried if I show up assuming**  
**I’m still invited over it’ll seem rude so I need**  
**an excuse to still show up at his house. Please.** _,_ sent 3:03 PM

 

Though the responses stopped coming, Horatio still pretended to be deeply invested in the conversation taking place via text, if only to avoid entirely acknowledging the girls who stared at him as they exited Saint Anne’s Private School for Gifted Young Ladies, an establishment at which he was almost entirely unwelcome. Without a literal prince standing next to him to take on the burden of unwanted attention, he received the sort of unnecessary pointing and shy giggling that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. God forbid a girl from Saint Anne’s Private actually muster up enough courage to talk to him; he was here out of necessity, and on a smaller part, was terrified at the prospect of someone explicitly trying to flirt with him. He practically leaped when he felt a light tap on the shoulder, to the undesired surprise of Ophelia, who had struggled to do the tapping in the first place.

If Horatio had grown taller than Hamlet over the summer, he now towered over Ophelia, who had stopped growing before even so much as reaching five feet. As if to go along with it, over the years, she had adopted the vibe of a porcelain doll that had just gotten up and started walking around one day, with a smooth visage and lacey additions to her uniform. It seemed that Hamlet and Ophelia together were trying to prove the trend that if one’s family made enough money, one would lose the ability to look like they actually belonged in a midwestern town famous for its corn-related events. “What happened?” she asked, shooing away the curiosity of her classmates with a look too intimidating to fit her aesthetic.

“I don’t know. He got pulled out of class and hasn’t texted me. Has he texted you?”

Ophelia laughed, starting them on the path home under bitter pretenses. “He told me before his last recital that he’d prefer to only speak to me in person, because he’s afraid he can’t properly convey what he needs to over text. I really just think he’s afraid Papa will see something he sent me and tell his dad.”

Horatio dug his hands into his pockets, unsure what to do with them. He hadn’t imagined the walk to the house to be a long one, but now that he had started on it with prying Saint Anne’s girls around every corner, it was as dreadfully exhaustive as the run to the edge of town described to him over lunch, and as rude as it was to cavil over, he’d never been alone with Ophelia (Hamlet having been their mutual acquaintance and usual go-between), which he didn’t find initially appealing at all.

Since childhood, he considered it his position to simply be around, and was robbed of that as a unique quality by her, always having been around herself. A rival in the shape and form of a young lady Gertrude preferred to keep in Hamlet’s company over Horatio in any instance, and to make matters worse, she was pleasant in every sense of the word. He recognized long ago that he was certainly in the wrong for looking for her shortcomings.

“Did he have a habit of sending you things he wouldn’t want his dad to see?”

“Not at all,” she said. “There were poems--a brief stint of them--but I think his dad already knew about his brief tendencies to try and wax poetic.”

True, whether through direct conversation or eventual confession, Hamlet told his father about everything, aside from, Horatio assumed, the drinking, the late trips to the field, and perhaps even a majority of his greater internal struggles. ‘Everything’ was surface level, or Horatio underestimated how close one could grow to their parent, having never had the opportunity or interest to do so himself.

“He’s never texted me poems,” he said suddenly, making his realization aloud.

Ophelia laughed again. “Have you requested any?”

“No. That’d be weird.”

“I think he’d jump at the opportunity to write more. He needs excuses to be unreasonably creative these days. He was ecstatic when I asked if he’d been using the ukulele I lent, if he could show me what he’d been working on with it.”

Feeling as if he was losing something by finding this information new, Horatio fell silent, letting the conversation die as a bud, drowning it with a ‘Well, you know,’ a shrug that meant little, and nothing further.

Their walk home soon reached the bus ride stretch of the journey, like a lie buried within the confines of the idea of the walk, though they had taken their time so well that the bus was clear of its initial afternoon traffic. On board, the both of them stood, finding some awkward intimacy in the notion of sitting, though not avoiding it in constantly bumping into one another as the bus shifted from roads crying out in need of repair. The only section remaining consistently pothole-free was the long haul to the Kings’ estate, bordered on both sides by seas of the crops which had afforded them their luxury. To one side there was an immeasurable amount of corn, and to the other, a section of cherry trees hugged loosely by the fading beauty of a white picket fence. At a break in the fencing, the bus turned, the last stop on the route nestled outside the King family orchard sign that had become too quaint for the scale the business had taken. From there, Horatio and Ophelia set out to walking again, back to the road to continue the path that the bus wouldn’t take as, legally, that must have been the point where public roads led straight into private property.

The house on the main estate stood among the corn with a prowess that was unreasonable for the tastes of anyone in Denmark outside of the Kings. There wasn’t enough staffing to keep it from falling into partial disrepair, much to the publicly known disgust of Gertrude, but if the paint on the exterior wasn’t at least a little chipped and weathered, it might have actually been a greater source of envy from those in the pitiful farmhouses far down the road. Ophelia held up a hand to prevent Horatio from ringing the doorbell, as this was technically her home as well as the Kings’; it was supposedly a solid business practice to keep her father directly at hand at all times for whatever it was that he did, though Horatio suspected, once again, that Gertrude had some hand in keeping a pleasant young lady around at all times for her son in his budding youth.

And so much as think of the devil, she will appear, lounging in the kitchen with a glass of something that, appearance aside, was certainly not orange juice. Horatio felt the need to get the first word in to avoid being seen as an intruder. “Good afternoon, Mrs. King.”

Gertrude smiled for the sake of seeming pleasant, taking a sip of whatever was in the rocks glass. Her gaze over the rim was hypercritical. “Lettie’s not feeling well. I don’t think it’s a good day for friends to be over,” she said.

“Just wanted to make sure he’s alright. He left school suddenly,” Horatio replied, hearing himself and disliking the sound.

Something like disgust flashed briefly over Gertrude’s face before she cleared it away with another sip. “His father insisted. If you’re going to visit, be brief, and Ophelia, sweetie, next time let me know when you get out of class. I’d be happy to send a car.” A smile, again. It was easy to see how Hamlet adopted the routine.

Horatio could feel the woman’s eyes on his back as Ophelia dragged him down the hall, past the dining room, down the two pitiful stairs some architect decided long ago should lead to Hamlet’s room. She did the knocking but did not stay for the result of it, instead leaving Horatio with a few encouraging pats on the back before disappearing. “Homework,” she said, though it was only the first day of the semester. In context, rather than a blatant lie, it was something like a parting pleasantry.

Ophelia had Homework to do, and Horatio would have to knock again, no one having answered the door the first time. No one answered the second time. Horatio started to wonder just how far he was willing to take this quick visit before ‘checking in’ really did becoming ‘intruding’. Opening the door just a crack on his own couldn’t hurt if he announced himself quietly on the way in, he reasoned. Stepping inside was fine, because it was Hamlet, who he was familiar with, and because instead of a response, Horatio only heard a keyboard being played carelessly. That, and…

“ _Heather’s go-o-o-o-ne, but she will live fore-e-e-ver--_ ”

“Is this from that movie?”

Hamlet stopped abruptly and spun his chair around, brushing the keyboard unintentionally. It was on the most 80s setting, and hitting a number of keys let off an embarrassing set of nostalgic, electronic tone rather than the clatter of a regular piano. His eyes were damp, his cheeks red. “The musical adaptation. ‘Me Inside of Me’ is a fucking jam.”

“You were singing Heather’s part?”

“I was singing all parts. There’s only one of me.”

Horatio watched awkwardly as the prince wiped his eyes on his sleeve to try and clear up any evidence of what was already known. When he discovered he couldn’t stand the result, he dipped a hand into his bag and found his handkerchief, offering it up as casually as he could. Hamlet took it and laughed. “You really are an antique,” he said; he held it tightly, folded and unused.

“Every time I try and use tissues, Bill says I touch myself too much, and if I don’t cut it out he’s gonna stop buying them.”

“Do you?”

Horatio blushed. “No.”

“Liar.”

“If I did, I’d just…”

“Just…?”

“...Just use a sock or something. I do the laundry anyway. Don’t look at me like that’s surprising, what else are you supposed to--no, wait. Stop. I came to ask if you were okay, we really can’t get derailed like this.” As inappropriate as it seemed to segway at that particular point, it wasn’t going to happen otherwise. “Why’d you get pulled out of class?”

The prince’s face dropped, and he spun his chair back around. Turning the keyboard back on, he switched it back to the standard mode and tapped a few keys without considering their sound. “Yorick,” he said.

Keeping his eyes on the other, Horatio brought a spare chair over (and what a house it was that the bedroom had spares). He took a seat next to Hamlet as his hands began the slowest rendition of Chopin’s Nocturnes that they could manage. The handkerchief sat neatly over the stamp of the keyboard’s brand. Though it took a while longer at the chosen tempo, Horatio waited until a break in pieces to speak. “What about Yorick?” he asked.

The next section began at a normal speed, but a quieter volume. “He died.”

Horatio looked upward, toward his reflection in the window, and saw himself mouth ‘oh’, with nothing following it. There was photograph mounted in the corner of the sill, recently placed there. It was old enough to still have a date stamped in the corner, yet Horatio remembered the time it was taken.

Yorick had been the family’s favored and only aupair. He was another in the category of people that had always been there, even after Hamlet’s eventual maturity and changing circumstances eliminated the need for someone like that. Still, he found some usefulness in offering up his limited knowledge of cooking, yard work, maintenance and piano, along with the irreplaceable quality of making the young prince smile at home. What he was paid for his series of unofficial positions was the sole knowledge of Hamlet’s father, who paid him, and his living arrangements involving a small, vacant bedroom upstairs remained the same, even after he traded the household for residence at the hospital. While Horatio hadn’t checked, he imagined most of the man’s things were still there.

What was likely was that the subsequent medical bills fell on none other than Yorick himself, who hadn’t made a practice of mentioning a family of his own, extended or otherwise. Hamlet visited until it became inconvenient in his mother’s eyes to do so often, especially when she felt the time was being spent on a dying man.

“Today was his last day, I guess,” Hamlet said. “I read somewhere that, supposedly, you can tell that sort of thing. Like God telling you when it’s time. He wanted to talk to me. He said it’d been a while.”

The picture depicted Hamlet at his sixth birthday, Yorick with a balloon animal he had crafted himself, a gaggle of children who didn’t matter anymore.

“I said I was sorry. He said, ‘Hi Sorry, I’m Yorick.’ His voice sounded like someone had driven it through the mud.”

It wasn’t a mere dog, or a rabbit’s head, but bird of some complicated invention. Hamlet had cake on his shirt, having dropped in awe at the creation. Horatio remembered the sounds of his mother laughing, giving him affectionate coos and suggestions that he look at the camera.

“I visited him a while ago, and I saw him before, but I somehow forgot that he didn’t have hair anymore. He made light of everything we talked about, like it was some bit. Like someone was going to come out from behind the ficus in the corner and say I’d been pranked and shake my hand.”

He’d held the bird in his hands for all of a minute before he tripped, crashing to the ground with the balloons as his cushion. Yorick offered to make a new one, but was loudly and tearfully denied.

“After a while, we stopped talking, and I just sat there.”

At some point, the music had stopped. Horatio felt as if he’d been pulled back from the realities of the photograph to look at the prince in present, who sat with his shoulders slumped and his hands in his lap. He’d rubbed his eyes dry.

“And he just died. Like he was absolutely nothing.”

Without saying anything further, Horatio extended an arm and wrapping it around his shoulders. Taking it as an invitation, Hamlet leaned into him, though he couldn’t manage a proper sob, burying his face and wrapping his arms around Horatio’s neck in lieu of it. They remained still, save for a hand coming up on Horatio’s part to brush through the prince’s hair. The picture in the window darkened as it was blanketed by the setting sun coming through the glass a vivid orange, and through no particular act on anyone’s part, it fell. It was enough to trigger conversation.

“You’re staying,” Hamlet said, hoarse and tired and muffled by his face still firmly pressed to Horatio’s cardigan.

“Your mom’ll kill me. She said it’s not a good day to have friends over.”

“My mom has had more screwdrivers today than there are at the fucking hardware store. I’ll argue your case. We’re still doing _Anna Karenina_ and Żubrówka.”

They remained still until the bedroom door opened, and they parted in the nature of like charges, finding places to put their hands that were furthest from each other.

“You could knock,” Hamlet hissed, spinning around in his chair to face Laertes in the doorframe.

He stood there cramped by the width of his shoulders, shadows settling over his face, and his expression was set in its usual exasperation for whenever he and Hamlet spoke to one another. “Gertrude says she’d like it if you’d get washed up fer dinner,” he said. His brow furrowed as he took in Horatio to the left. “Didn’t know you two were still hangin’ out. How’s the foster thing?”

Horatio sucked in his cheek a bit, his level of discomfort speaking with Ophelia now seeming somewhat low compared to the discomfort involved with her brother. This kind of discomfort had layers, where the surface layer had a symmetrical jaw that Hamlet often talked about after he got too drunk to remember it. The layers afterward consisted of a specific set of moral values that counteracted Hamlet’s entirely. However, the two carried the same bluntness. “It’s fine. Bill’s fine,” Horatio said, not meaning to sound short but accomplishing it nonetheless.

“He’s way out on the other edge town, ain’t he? In that shitty little brick house?” Laertes asked, dragging on a conversation Horatio was not keen on having. He would try his best to kill it.

“Yup.”

But trying was not, apparently, succeeding, as Laertes crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, his pinnacle small talk position. “Haven’t seen you in church these past couple sundays,” he said.

“Hamlet and I should really get washed up.”

“You missed a real good sermon on Sampson.”

Suddenly, Hamlet was standing, hand on Horatio’s shoulder. “It’s really a shame they don’t write that shit down anywhere. They could publish a book of all the stories you hear at church. Bet that’d be a bestseller,” he said, taking on a long, sarcastic drawl. “Don’cha reckon?”

Laertes made a face, something like a struggle between annoyance and civility. He pointed one of his beefy fingers. “It’s taco night. Don’t ruin taco night,” he warned, ducking back out into the hall. The floor creaked as he stomped up the stairs.

“I’ll try not to!” Hamlet called after him, if only to make sure he didn’t return.

Where there would usually be triumphant laughter on Hamlet’s part there was silence. He managed a smile, only managed, giving Horatio’s shoulder a pat as if to substitute it for something more satisfying. They made brief eye contact, fatigue quickly settling into the prince’s face. Unfortunately, taco night was a long standing tradition in the King household, and over the years had become code for a dinner that was unavoidable no matter the circumstances. In the best of times, the taco night card was played when the family needed to feel freshly united. In the worst, it meant one family member needed to Have A Talk with another, and the only way to do that was over dinner with everyone else present. Horatio had been to taco night all of four times in its history, being held, on average, once a month, every month since before Hamlet was born. It was not a night for outsiders.

As per tradition, Ophelia had the table set, folding the third nicest set of napkins into roses to place in front of the fourth nicest set of dishware. She gave a pleasant smile from across the table, a round polished wood which had replaced the long rectangular one of a few years back. There was no designated head with this style, but Hamlet’s father made it a point to always sit directly at twelve o'clock, if the table were a timepiece. He sat there now, flipping through a clipboard of the usual business, his brother, Hamlet’s uncle, across from himself, and Gertrude at his left. She saw Horatio and straightened her back, hands now folding tightly on the tabletop in front of her. “Shouldn’t you be getting home soon, Horatio? Your father’s going to worry,” she said.

Ophelia had already folded the necessary eighth napkin rose, and Hamlet made a point to pull Horatio’s chair out for him before sitting down himself. “He already texted Bill. I figured he’d stay the night.”

“Tonight’s not a good night, Lettie, I think you need to take it easy,” Gertrude insisted. “Maybe wait for the weekend.”

Hamlet’s father looked up from his work, pushing his glasses up his nose with a knuckle. He eyed his son, who looked to him pleadingly, and he winked. They shared not only a single name between the two of them, but an extensive arrangement of signals and expressions meant to be lost on Gertrude. He sighed, setting the clipboard down and reaching for the first tortilla. “We don’t have you over for enough taco nights, Horatio. You like tacos?”

A genuine smile finally start to play at the prince’s lips, but he kept in check under his mother’s watch, as she was now visibly livid; the moment his father spoke, he knew he and Horatio had already won. “I do,” Horatio said quietly.

He attempted to follow the man’s lead and get a tortilla for himself, only to find Ophelia’s father keeping the whole lot from him. Hamlet slid one over from his own plate before going for the ground beef, losing it instead to Gertrude. He claimed the rice in retaliation, and the mood for the evening was thoroughly solidified. Until Hamlet’s father passed the dishes from Gertrude’s side of the table to Hamlet’s, Horatio could help himself to nothing. It took fifteen minutes of struggle before he had a completed taco, and all the while, conversation ranged from mild to passive-aggressive.

“No girlfriend yet, Horatio?” Gertrude hummed critically.

“No, ma’am. I’m focusing on my studies. Bill and I are hoping I’ll get a scholarship so I can go to Wittenburg.”

“Wittenburg’s so far. We’re trying to get Lettie to apply to somewhere closer, but he’s already been accepted, of course,” she said.

Hamlet placed a hand on Horatio’s thigh beneath the table. “Horatio’ll get in. He’s had straight A's since they started grading us. We’ve been talking about Double-U since last year when Marcellus got in.”

“Wittenburg’s all liberal arts, ain’t it?” Laertes interrupted, between his third and fourth taco.

Hamlet’s grip tightened. “They have a good political science program,” he said.

“Horatio, remind me what you’re planning to major in?” Hamlet’s father asked, meaning well, but dividing himself between the clipboard, his food and the conversation at hand.

“Classics.”

If she weren’t making an effort to seem polite, Gertrude might have openly scoffed. She was cutting her taco with a knife and fork, like some kind of monster. “I’m not familiar with the types of jobs in that field,” she said.

“Civil service,” said Ophelia.

“Librarianship,” said Hamlet.

“I might change majors anyway,” said Horatio. “Everyone does.”

Hamlet’s hand was working its way inward. It had only been twenty minutes. Horatio hadn’t eaten anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think the best way to build a soft taco, actually, is to spread the sour cream on the tortilla first. That way, you get even amounts of sour cream in every bite, and it helps to prevent the meat from breaking through the tortilla and making a mess. Ideally, tacos should be build shell>sour cream>proteins>cheese>salsa>lettuce.


	3. Seeing and Hearing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions. 
> 
> And cornfield demon sightings have to come from somewhere, don't they?

“ _ And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them--or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him. _ ”

The original plan was to take a drink every time Oblonsky came up in the text, but by the end of the first chapter, it became clear that that was not the way to read  _ Anna Karenina  _ without dying. Having already worked his way through a quarter of his own private stash of vodka, Hamlet then suggested a drink taken every time Oblonsky talked about hating his wife, though he seemed to arbitrarily be breaking his own set of rules with each new paragraph. How they had gotten to chapter three was lost on Horatio. He had remained at least partially sober, unable to make any headway on his own drinking when enraptured by the prince’s loud literary opinions every third sentence.

“ _ Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his-- _ okay, so, the thing is, is...Stiva’s fine, he’s just. The issue is that it’s so clear early on in the text that...that he’s clearly seekin’ an outlet where he has some freedom of choice, but he’s just gonna...write it off like he doesn’t actually...have that. You know. Like it wasn’t his choice in the first place to just. Put it in.”

Hamlet said everything from the floor, where his shirt was halfway unbuttoned and his tie hung loosely about his shoulders. He struggled to hold the book above him, though Tolstoy was unforgiving in the volume’s published thickness, and he became prone to dropping it regularly on his face. Horatio watched from the bed, making the occasional comment when Hamlet went to drink, making him verbally unable to retaliate: “He’s clearly in that mindset based on chapter three, yeah. But you also have to consider the consistent conditioning he’s getting from the liberal party--are you doing okay, though?”

“But he doesn’t even  _ care  _ about the liberal party, Horatio! He doesn’t even give a _ fuck _ , he just! Reads their fuckin’ news! He just--no, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m not Sure, I’m Hamlet,” he laughed, though he immediately started to cry. 

Horatio sensed it was time to confiscate the vodka, and he found it took little effort to do so. For the time being, he rolled it under the bed, sliding down onto the floor himself to sit the prince up and take him into his arms. He cupped his face, wiping his tears away with his thumbs. Horatio was at least partially sober. Partially. As in a part. The other part of him, the vodka part, stirred up enough confidence in him to press a kiss to Hamlet’s forehead, then his cheeks, then his lips.  _ Anna Karenina  _ was somewhere between them as the prince pushed him against the bed’s end, pulling his collar aside to suck on his neck. “I’m so fuckin’ tired of this,” he said suddenly, to which Horatio’s first instinct was to apologize. “Not like,  _ this _ this,” he continued. “Like...I’m Hamlet, get it? I’m not sure, I’m Hamlet.”

Horatio shook his head. “I don't get it. Like, Yorick ruined dad jokes for you?”

“God, no...Sort of? No. Like, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow with a fuckin’ hangover, and Mother’s gonna fuckin’...ask why you didn’t sleep in the guest room...and we're gonna go to class, and I'm gonna fuckin’ talk to the same fuckin’ people because if I don't it's gonna be on the goddamn news or somethin’? Like, I hate being fuckin’...nice to people. Hate bein’ Hamlet, like I gotta be nice’n...do political science. ‘M gonna puke. Have you ever seen any demons?”

It was a lot of drunken babbling to take in. “You mean cornfield demons?” Horatio asked, kissing him again.

“Yeah.”

“No. Have you?”

Hamlet stood, trying and failing to pull Horatio with him. He clapped a hand over his mouth, fighting back a wave of vomit. “Yeah,” he said, peeling off his button-up entirely to reveal an equally plain t-shirt underneath.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” he said, stumbling toward the sliding door that led to the yard. “Come on.”

Tripping over  _ Anna Karenina  _ on his way to his feet, Horatio followed, reaching a hand out to grab Hamlet’s shirt only to miss and trip again. “Are we gonna go see--”

“Demons, yeah. Some fuckin’ corn demons.”

With more effort than necessary, Hamlet shoved the door open, allowing the sound of crickets and running water from the jacuzzi to leak into the room. He stepped into the blue light the pool had to offer, and if not for Horatio’s half a mind to remember their shoes, he would have braved the cold stone path alone. Slipping them on, they stood at the pool’s edge as if they’d never seen it before. Their hands tangled together, and they left the light for the fields behind the house. 

It took stalks of corn towering above him in the dark to sober Horatio further. He and Hamlet now walked single-file with Hamlet in front, phone outstretched and used as a weak source of light, the crops brushing their sides the deeper they went. Again, Horatio was reminded of the lunchtime conversation, feeling a terrifying monotony in his feet trekking over the uneven soil for what seemed like an immeasurable amount of time. His grip on the prince’s hand tightened, afraid to lose him to the shadows of the crop, and as he felt himself grow used to the settling terror of being out in the field, Hamlet halted. He turned his phone screen off, pressing on a few steps more to where the field cleared away into path, stretching expansively to either side of him. Once there, Horatio noticed a horrible amount of silence where not even the crickets reached them, and was given a new layer of dread when the prince let go of his hand. Eyes adjusting, he saw, instead, Hamlet gripping his knees, stumbling further down the path and finally throwing up.

“You haven’t really seen anything out here, have you?” Horatio mumbled, voice shaking as badly as his extremities.

The vomiting continued, sounding and looking painful until it trickled off into coughing. “Do you know where that came from in the first place?” Hamlet moaned, giving the nighttime a brief view of the window of his abdomen as he wiped his face in his shirt.

“...The demons?”

Though it was hard to see in the dark, Hamlet nodded. “I think it was in the sixties or something?” he said. “I guess Farfa--sorry, I guess my gramps was pretty fed up with some sixties era teens comin’ to the fields at night to hang out? That’s what Father told me. And I guess at some point, he got a couple’a dogs, and he let ‘em out exclusively at night to run around and scare the fuck outta people. Greyhounds or somethin’.”

“That’s anticlimactic, but I guess it makes sense.”

“No, ‘m not done,” Hamlet said, grabbing Horatio’s hand again. He chose a direction on a whim and started down it. “It kinda worked to scare people off, and it started a couple’a rumors, so Farfar kept doin’ it. And he made it a nightly thing to let ‘em outside to run in the fields. Then, I guess one night, the dogs didn’t come back. And Farfar heard some kinda screamin’ that he told Father wasn’t any type’a screamin’ he’d ever heard a man make. He waited ‘til daytime and went to go look for the dogs, and when he got pretty far out in the field, he and my dad just found a whole lotta blood. No bodies. Never saw those dogs again.”

It took everything, every ounce of young adult willpower Horatio had in him to not wet himself. “Are you serious? Can we go back? Hamlet? Where’s the house?” he whispered.

Hamlet laughed, and it echoed. “Man, ‘m kiddin’! Could you imagine the fuckin’ legal shit Farfar would’a got into if he let some fuckin’ dogs attack people? We never had dogs.”

Resentment made its way into the next squeeze Horatio gave the prince’s hand. “You haven’t seen anything, then? There are no demons.”

He was met with Hamlet gazing at him from over his shoulder. “There are,” he said, turning away to look at his phone. He stopped to type something. “I didn’t lie. I’ve seen ‘em.”

The phone went back in his pocket. His eyes went back to Horatio. Wet, blue like the pool. He reached out, resting his arms on Horatio’s shoulders, then moving his hands the buttons of his cardigan. “I’m tired’a lyin’. I lie all the time,” he said, leaning close for another kiss.

One, two, three, four buttons and Hamlet let out a deep sigh, dissatisfied to find another layer of buttons underneath on Horatio’s shirt. His hands were shaking, and he wasn’t able to put enough effort into pulling them loose. Once again, unable to catch the feeling in time to stop it, he started to cry. He pressed his forehead against Horatio’s chest, fishing his phone back out of his pocket, looking in the other pocket for his earbuds. With a clumsy hand, he pushed one into Horatio’s ear, the other into his own, tapped through his playlist until he found something. Kreisler, ‘Liebesleid’.

“Lying’s all we’ve got to keep us sane, huh?” Horatio said, looking up at the sky; in lieu of a full view of the stars, it was cloudy.

Hamlet smiled. “No, it ain’t keepin’ that at all.”

“‘Ain’t’?”

“Shut up,” he said, shoving the phone into Horatio’s care as he tried to figure out the mechanics of unzipping his pants. Oh, and there was another button.

“Hamlet, you are  _ wasted _ .”

“I know. Shut up.”

The prince knelt, pulling the earbud out of his ear on accident. Tchaikovsky’s ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ began for Horatio alone. “You’re wasted. Hey. Hamlet.”

“ _ You’re _ wasted. Why ain-- _ aren’t _ you wearin’ fuckin’...easy-to-get-off pants?”

“Let’s just go back inside. We shouldn’t.”

“Horatio, please.”

“Is this what we came out here for?”

Hamlet looked up at the other, indignant. He’d worked his way past the barriers of both Horatio’s pants and underwear, reaching a point where he visibly didn’t know what he was doing. “Demons don’t show up for two people. You gotta be alone,” he said, putting his hands...God, somewhere. Anywhere. Whatever.

Horatio pulled the remain bud out, wrapping the pair around the phone. It buzzed with an incoming message, and he nearly dropped it, but then, there was no other place for it but the ground if Hamlet wouldn’t take it back. He was occupied, and he pleaded for Horatio’s hands in his hair. It might not have been the best idea to oblige him, though the vodka and the prince’s literal head start on the matter made for a convincing argument. What else was there to do in a cornfield in Denmark.

Unfortunately, it was all too soon that Horatio was reminded of the misgivings of the location. He had grown used to the silence (or the version of silence that included the lewdness at his waist), and a sudden rustling of something or another in the distance was enough to unsettle him again. Sudden, excessive rustling, beyond what the wind could accomplish. Horatio could manage little in the way of speech without being cursed with the sound of his own voice, which was now walking the lines between legitimate pleasure and returning dread; he forced himself: “What is that. Hamlet. What is that.”

In return, he received something of Look before the prince actually pulled away to reply. “What is what? I just said demons don't show fer…,” he paused, wiped his mouth and turned. “...Did you hear that.”

Horatio had something of a death grip on his hair, for which he mentally apologized. “The rustling?”

”The screamin’.”

“What? That’s not funny.”

“I know,” he said; his eyes were glued to the path in the distance, and when Horatio squinted, he couldn’t look away himself. 

There certainly wasn’t any screaming to be heard, but upon straining, he could make out the sound of footsteps pounding in the dirt, followed by the darkened image of a shadow moving toward the two of them. “Oh shit. Oh shit. Horatio. Shit. Oh shit.” 

Running toward the two of them. 

Horatio felt the prince zip up his pants, wrapping a hand around his wrist. Somewhere on the ground, Hamlet’s phone buzzed again. They ran, the ringtone starting and fading away as they abandoned the device in panic. ‘Sweet Caroline’. The path took a brief incline, and Horatio saw the house behind them, growing smaller the further they ran. He started to cry. “You said there weren’t gonna be any demons!”

“I also said I lie all the time!”

As if Hamlet’s lunchtime dream was prophetic, they continued to sprint down the path with no apparent change in their surroundings, the horizon ahead of them or the distance made between them and their pursuer. Horror movie tropes dictated that, after a time, someone would have to trip, and that someone was definitely Horatio. He felt the serendipitous amount of soil beneath him start to shift, bringing him crashing downward in a matter of seconds. Hamlet soon followed, done in by his monstrous grip on the other’s arm. It remained (maybe even tightened) as they sat in the dirt and screamed. A version of the Lord’s prayer with a lot more open wailing was hurriedly escaping Horatio’s lips. He crawled on top of Hamlet, who was ready to throw up a second time, blinded by his own tears and a sudden light shining in his face. The shadow had caught up to them and now loomed.

In place of certain demise, a voice. Dainty, pleasant. “You guys are fuckin’ dumbasses.” Ophelia. “What the heck are you doing out here?” she asked, lowering her phone’s brightness.

“What the heck are  _ you _ doing here, is the real question,” Hamlet snapped; he’d attached himself to Horatio’s torso like a koala to a tree.

“You texted me. ‘Hey, Ophelia, some crazy shit’s happenin’ out in the corn. Please come. Also delete these texts, I don’t want anybody to read ‘em.’ And everything was misspelled--Horatio, you can stop crying.”

“I’m trying,” Horatio sobbed. He was. “I-I-I thought you were a-a-a demon.”

“Just a cute girl. Nice try though,” Ophelia giggled, if only to oversell her image. 

She crouched, handing Hamlet his phone back and reaching a hand out to wipe the tears from Horatio’s face to a point where he could actually see. Perhaps it was the truly miniscule amount of vodka he had left in him, but he felt an intense series of emotions, namely the bold contrast of gratitude for and aversion to Ophelia’s kindness. He wanted to take his turn and throw up on the ground. Not here, though, with her and Hamlet present, with his fly half undone and the remnants of an awkward erection.

Hamlet eventually detached himself, untangled his earbuds and stood up. He slipped them in and wiped his eyes. “We should go inside,” he said. “I don’t know why we came out here. We have school tomorrow.”

Unavoidably, Horatio and Ophelia shared a look. They stood together, walking together even after Horatio collected himself enough to return to his pettiness, as his personal etiquette prevented him from speeding up to meet Hamlet’s pace, leaving her a yard behind on the darkened dirt path. She smiled at him, and he pretended he couldn’t see it in the dark. From Hamlet’s earbuds, they could hear music, indistinguishable as the prince flipped rapidly through his playlist. He created a pattern for himself of listening to the first twenty seconds before growing tired of a track, moving onto the next. The noise was all they had until they reached the house.

“You really shouldn’t go looking for demons, Horatio,” Ophelia said at the door. 

Horatio looked past her, to his reflection in the pool. He played with a loose portion of his bangs. “I’ll try not to.”

“And don’t do things just because he tells you to,” she said, watching Hamlet slip into his bedroom. Whether she read something in Horatio’s expression or she predicted his likely response, she repeated herself. “I mean it.”

No matter what he did, Horatio couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with her. “I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

Hamlet had turned the lights in his room off, retiring to the bed alone. His phone screen flashed occasionally through the sliding door. As if it was beckoning him, Horatio gave a weak wave and moved inside himself, only to be stopped with one foot still outside. “I believe you,” Ophelia murmured. “But he’s kind of scary sometimes, isn’t he?”

“He isn’t.”

The eye contact came suddenly, and with an unintentional amount of ferocity. Horatio’s eyes were still wet. His face was red. Ophelia was calm. It was as if she hadn’t heard, and Horatio repeated himself again before closing the door to put the glass between them.  _ He isn’t _ . Watching through the glass, he mouthed it, catching her before she went to the door leading to a different section of the house. Still calm. She mouthed something back, slipped inside and waved.

Horatio chided himself for leaving marks on the door, having let his palms rest there. He rubbed them away to the best of his ability with his sleeve before removing his shirt entirely. It went somewhere on the floor, along with his shoes and the copy of  _ Anna Karenina  _ threatening to trip him again. Hamlet called out for him in the dark. He crawled in bed, close enough to hear the bass in a song he didn’t recognize, far enough for some stretch of untouched mattress to separate them. There, in no-man’s land, his hand found the prince’s, but he was unable to find anything in him to grab hold of it.

“In the field, you didn’t hear it?” Hamlet whispered. 

They brushed knuckles. “Hear what?”

Nothing came of it. Hamlet turned over. “Never mind,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for your consideration, hamlet has a stronger midwestern farm family voice when he's drunk and can't put thought into correcting it. also he swallows, but that's not a very tasteful thing to say.


	4. Mount Ida

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions. 
> 
> And it seems like a nice day for driving.

Horatio awoke to the wrong Hamlet shoving open the blinds. The elder, Hamlet King I, laughed heartily at him as he stretched an arm over his face to shield his eyes from the light, feeling what he hadn’t assumed was a lot of vodka at the time now pounding in his forehead. He threw the blankets off of himself, sliding out of bed before he found room in the pain to feel self-conscious. “I’m betting Bill’s not gonna like it if you’re tardy, son,” said the prince’s father. The king, in that metaphorical sense, but that was a little too on the nose.

“Where’s Hamlet?” 

“Right here,” Hamlet’s father laughed again, this time delighted by his own joke. “Oh, he snuck out early. Took the nice car.”

It felt awkward to respond aloud, so Horatio nodded. He found his shirt on the floor, his shoes. Awkward. He found his phone lying around and wondered why the alarm had been deleted. “I’ll be going now, thanks for having me,” he said. Awkward, awkward, awkward.

“You need a ride?”

“Oh Lord, no--,” he starting speaking before thinking about it, and as he stopped himself, he felt his face growing warmer. “--I mean. I can take the bus.”

“You’re sure? I’m going that way anyhow.”

Futility found it’s true definition between the two of them, Hamlet’s father trailing Horatio on the way out of the bedroom and to the front porch. He watched from the doorway as Horatio went down the few front steps, buttoning his shirt and looking out to where the driveway merged into the road. The walk to the bus stop would take ten minutes alone unless he ran. Horatio’s shoulders slumped. Yes, this was what futility felt like. “...If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” he mumbled.

Like any moody, awkward teenager, he would then spend the car ride staring out the window, though he was hyper aware of his posture and sat straighter than anyone should ever sit in a pickup truck. True, the truck was large, sparkling clean and the latest in whatever line of truck it was, but good postures didn’t quite fit its image. In fact, good postures didn’t quite fit the image of Denmark as a whole; the only ones who thought otherwise were Ophelia’s father and Gertrude, the two sole representatives of Proper Etiquette in the county. Every other citizen followed the same basic rule of going to church a reasonable number of times a month and calling it square. This was the method of etiquette utilized by the King himself, who Horatio swore wore the same collared shirt and slacks for every occasion. Even there, in the car, Hamlet’s father wore that signature outfit, with the addition of a tie sitting folded in the cupholder. For later, Horatio suspected, although consideration of it made it seem peculiar. He sucked in the urge to ask about it, hoping to let the moments in the car pass quickly in silence until they reached the school. Futility. Hamlet’s father sighed, startling him.

“Funeral’s friday. I didn’t know if that was a bad day for a funeral,” he said.

Horatio kept his eyes glued on the passing fields. “Pardon?” 

“Funeral for Yorick. Nothing too extravagant. I was thinking I’d tell Hamlet this morning. Then I thought, ‘That’ll ruin his day,’ so I didn’t. I mean, I couldn’t have told him anyway. He was outta the house by sunrise. Poor kid.”

“Did you want me to tell him…?” Horatio asked slowly, afraid to entirely commit to what he was asking.

“I’m extending an invitation, if you’d like to come. You’re good for making sure Trudy doesn’t smother him.”

“Trudy as in...his mom?” The car stopped at a light. Horatio withdrew his eyes from the window to avoid looking directly at a pedestrian. “I don’t think I do anything quite that useful,” he said.

He felt a hand clap down on his shoulder, followed by the accompanying sound of a fatherly chuckle. “‘Course you do,” said the King. “You were with him all last night, weren’t you? Heard you two out in the field screaming your asses off.”

“Sorry.”

“Sometimes you need a good scream. And some good 80 proof liquor, apparently.”

“ _ Sorry. _ ”

Another laugh. Horatio wondered why the school was so goddamn far away. He was sweating in a shirt that was already a day old, and it was killing him. Hamlet’s father kept talking. “I like to think I’m on top of things in terms of knowing what he’s thinking, but the older he gets, the more I start to think that isn’t the case. Who’s that guy that carries the globe around?”

Recognizing the question took a moment. Answering properly took another. “Atlas,” said Horatio.

“Hamlet likes to think he’s Atlas sometimes; does that sound about right?”

“It’s your metaphor, sir.”

“Well then, I think he likes to think he’s gotta carry the whole world around on his back. I say leave that to the--is he roman or greek?”

“Greeks.”

“Leave it to the greeks.”

At long last, they parked. The click of the lock on the door sounded, to Horatio, the clicking of salvation from his awkward tomb. He tried to put a sense of finality into his thank you as he leaped out onto the sidewalk, but found himself unable to fully close the door. “I can’t really tell what he’s thinking either,” he said.

“No, it isn’t your job to tell what he’s thinking. It’s your job to keep him from thinking too much. Keep screaming in cornfields for no good reason. You boys can worry about what the county thinks after I’m dead and buried.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, sir.”

“And hey--you’re invited to the funeral for more than just giving Atlas a tap-out, okay? You hung around Yorick just as much as any of us in the household. Say good-bye if you need to.”

Working his way to a stiff nod, Horatio shut the door and raised his hand to wave. Hamlet’s father waved back, ever the enthusiast, pulling away and into the road. It took seeing the car turn the corner and feeling the lack of weight on his shoulders to make Horatio realize that, after all of that, he’d forgotten his backpack. The sensation of brief panic was foreign, passing quickly as he went inside, deciding he didn’t have it in him to care. All the bag had in it was empty folders and syllabi that Bill was supposed to sign, anyway. 

Something of a terrible mood was setting in. Trekking up the stairs alone wasn’t a sensation Horatio looked forward to getting used to, and at the last step, he hoped this morning was going to be an isolated event, whatever it was. It hit him at the classroom entrance what the morning actually was; Hamlet had forgotten him. Or Hamlet left him behind. As if they were different, and one was more appealing. He opened the door in a worse mood than he intended, interrupting the morning routine without thinking about it. Hamlet was in the middle of his second Unfamiliar People Smile, and he unintentionally flashed it at Horatio, where it found its grave and died. Horatio wasn’t wearing a cardigan to tug on. Hamlet addressed him using his routine voice. “I had business this morning.” He was wearing sunglasses for his hangover. They were designer. He looked ridiculous.

“Your dad drove me,” Horatio said, facing forward the moment he got to his sea.

He wouldn't see Hamlet’s expression, which shifted rapidly to an envy the students still lingering around him wouldn't quite understand. To the prince, to have any time with his father without outside distraction (which was commonplace for the man that owned the county) was greatly sought after, cherished in the moment, and something he alone enjoyed so often. Thus, his ‘oh’ in reply was all too transparent. 

“We talked about greek mythology,” Horatio continued; he could feel Hamlet’s eyes on his back. “And he said to tell you that the funeral’s friday.”

Class started. The feeling of being stared at was replaced by the feeling of being punched softly. Hamlet wasn't sure what he was doing, but he was doing it, tapping his fist against the part of Horatio’s spine that wasn't shielded by the back of his chair, leaving his knuckles to rest there. “Why didn't he tell me himself?” he mumbled, routine voice swapped out for something strained and bitter.

“He said you left before he woke up,” Horatio whispered. “What was your ‘business’?”

Another couple of taps of the prince’s fist, the last slightly harder. “Stuff to make lying more convenient for me. Don't be mad at me.”

“I'm not,” said Horatio. He didn't want to be.

“Good. Don't get mad at me no matter what.”

“I won’t.” He didn't want to, no matter what.

Whether or not that was the end of it, they went through the rest of the day in relative silence, save for Horatio’s consistent need to borrow school supplies and give excuses to make up for the backpack that was still sitting somewhere on Hamlet’s bedroom floor. Over lunch, with both earbuds in, Hamlet hurried through his ritual of separating the contents of his salad. Tomato. Chicken. Cheese. Croutons. He offered the tomatoes on the end of his fork as if he was teasing, though his tone was flat and his face unchanged from the neutral expression he held when he spoke only to himself. Horatio took one.

At the final bell, it was as if a weight was lifted, or as if the two of them couldn’t stand whatever their situation was any longer. Hamlet paused his music, caught Horatio as he rose from his seat and started a conversation. “Does Bill need you home right away?”

Horatio shrugged. He had yet to surpass his current standing record of forty-eight hours without talking to his foster father, so he couldn't find it in himself to be care. 

“In any case, we’re going for a drive. I need to skip practice,” said the prince.

He spoke despite the presence of members of the heavily encumbered cross-country team whose practice he would be skipping. The prince was all too often brutal in his speech about the only sport he participated in. He’d announced almost publicly that he thought it didn’t take very much effort, which is why he joined. Even still, he had been putting in very little effort as of late, only recently gaining bereavement as an excuse. Especially with the sunglasses, he didn’t appear outwardly bereaved. 

They tore out of the parking lot with the speed of people that didn’t even think death existed. After hearing about his dreams, Horatio assumed it would take much more time for Hamlet to get to the town’s edges. He felt cheated until he noticed how far the fields still stretched along the open road. Nothing was new aside from a speed limit they drove past too quickly to read. “What kind of day is friday for a funeral?” Hamlet shouted, tossing Horatio his phone and pointing at the aux cord, sitting currently unattended. 

Horatio shrugged and plugged it in. Before he could go through the playlist for himself, Hamlet took it from him. He rolled the windows down and turned the volume up. It was, apparently, a loud music day, though Horatio didn’t recall hearing anything through the prince’s earbuds during class. Maybe he hadn’t been listening. Maybe earlier was a quiet music day, hangover permitting.

“It’s bullshit!”

Hamlet was steadily getting to eighty in a forty-five. Horatio would have feared for his life if there was any content to it outside of events of this nature. 

“They could have just had it today and gotten it over with! You don’t have to plan it! Just bury him!”

Nothing reached Horatio beyond the generic sound of Hamlet’s shouting, the wind rushing in his ears and the Bleachers part of Hamlet’s playlist. All the corn was blurring together. ‘Rollercoaster’, then ‘I Wanna Get Better’. Somewhere, the shouting had turned to singing. Still shouting, but aligned to music. ‘Don’t Take the Money’.

Horatio couldn’t hear himself, but he tried anyway. “Are you okay?”

Another few miles passed before Hamlet slammed on the brakes. It seemed like forever before they finally halted to a stop, where they sat in the middle of the road, a sign on the other side telling them in faded white text that Elsinore township was thirty-eight miles back. Ripping the keys out of the ignition, the prince sunk into his seat, blowing his bangs out of his face. He opened his door and shut it again to shut the radio off rather than tapping a button on his phone screen. His head rolled to face Horatio. His voice was hoarse from the yelling. “You said something?”

“...Do you ever feel like Atlas.”

They stared at each other, feeling the breeze carry through the windows. Hamlet looked as if he was expecting something else. Horatio wondered why he hadn’t given it to him.

“Why, are you Hercules? Because if you’re going to bear anything for me, I feel like Zeus,” he replied, reaching a hand over to take hold of Horatio’s chin; he thumbed at the other’s lips. “If you can guess why, I’ll give you a reward.”

Horatio found it difficult to focus, though he felt obligated to guess quickly and accurately. He shrugged again. Lots of shrugging today. “You’d like to purge the earth of all mortals.”

From expression alone, Horatio knew he was wrong. Sighing, looking out to the field on the other side of the road, Hamlet withdrew his hand. “Nice try, Ganymede.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’ll reward you anyway if you promise to never get mad at me, like I said before. No matter what the circumstances. Because I’m not trying to make you mad.”

“Hamlet, what are you talking about? I’m not mad.”

“Good, promise you’ll stay that way.”

“Why?”

“Promise.”

Another breeze came through the vehicle. Horatio hadn’t realized he was warm until it cooled him. He wanted Hamlet’s thumb on his lips again. “I promise,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah,, there's a lot more greek mythology in this one. it's kind of romantic, I don't know. I don't know if I should tag for zeus/ganymede or


	5. Triple Scoop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions. 
> 
> And Hamlet has a lot he needs to sort out.

All of the ice cream flavors had ridiculous local names written in chipping paint on the glass. Old flavors were covered up with tape or poorly scraped off. Hamlet argued with a disillusioned twenty-something behind the counter over the discontinuation of the pralines and cream flavor before he accepted the rum raisin. Horatio didn’t stop him from paying with the larger bills he was fishing out of his wallet, standing bitterly behind him with a single scoop of vanilla. They’d driven for another ten minutes down the road to the sounds of the prince chanting the word ‘reward’ under his breath as he mentally kept track of the signs that whirred past them, stopping at their current location, a business that was just on the brink of closing its doors for good. 

It should have been a kind of terrible date between the two of them, or at least Horatio personally assumed it should have been, until Ophelia showed up. She paid for her rocky road separately, though she gently slid a ten across the table faster than Hamlet could hand over a hundred. They all sat at one of two sticky, green-painted tables out beside the parking lot. “This isn’t much of a reward,” Hamlet said after a few moments of extended silence, ice cream eating, and apparently, reading Horatio’s mind.

“It’s kind of like when we were kids, though, right?” Ophelia mused; she did everything in her power to prevent her cone from dripping on the table, and Horatio took solace in it, if he couldn’t take solace in anything else she did.

“Is it?” he said stiffly.

Ophelia smiled at him without him smiling back. He felt like a supervillain. “You don’t remember Hamlet’s dad taking us to the Dairy Queen downtown? The first time you had to order on your own, you cried,” she said.

Horatio reddened. His childhood was a myth at best and a reality at worst, and in either scenario, he hated bringing it up. “I cried because you and Laertes ordered like pros. I felt like an idiot,” he admitted. “And the cashier laughed at me.”

“She laughed because you were cute, probably,” Ophelia replied. She held her hand beneath his cone to keep it from dripping while he was inattentive to it, like some sort of saint.

“I couldn’t order either,” Hamlet added, now between one raisin bit and the next in his process of picking them out and eating them first. “It was a scary cashier. I remember.”

“And I remember holding your hand,” Ophelia giggled, reaching across the table. “Just like this. You remember, Horatio?” She had finished her single-scoop and held out her other hand, one for each of them.

The memory was there, perhaps in picture format in some box in an attic somewhere, and like the september heat, it sat warm in Horatio’s chest. It dried out his throat faster than the vanilla could properly sooth it. Sweat was caking on his forehead and on the back of his neck. Ophelia looked as if she had never experienced sweat in her entire life. “I remember,” he said, finishing his ice cream and reaching out as if he’d lost a battle. As he’d expected, dreaded, and above all, remembered, her hand was soft. 

Hamlet threw his unfinished cone as far as he could manage, watching it crash down with thick splatter in the dirt on the other side of the road, eager to complete the hand-holding triangle they were beginning to form. He claimed his grip on Horatio’s free hand, his own palm the right combination of hot and sweaty that Horatio had expected. It was the least princely feeling Hamlet was responsible for. “We look like jackasses right now,” he said, now loud enough for the individual still manning the counter inside to stare out at them through the shop’s windows, smudged and scratched in every pane. “You don’t get this kind of experience at the Dairy Queen. You can’t swear at the Dairy Queen. They put that sign up in the lobby that says they’ll kick you out if you do.”

“I didn’t see a sign inside this place,” Ophelia said; she’d had the same grin playing at her lips for what seemed like forever now, and it was spreading to Hamlet like a disease.

“Horatio, quick, say a swear,” he said.

Horatio could see his reflection in the prince’s sunglasses. He blushed, or, he’d been blushing for a while now. “Damn.”

Ophelia snorted. 

“That was weak. Pick a better one,” Hamlet demanded, giving his hand a squeeze.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t swear, it was just awkward doing it on demand. And also he didn’t swear. Maybe it was the church, maybe it was the conservative county atmosphere, maybe it was neither of those things seeing as Hamlet had turned out the way he had. “Shit.”

Again, the sound of Hamlet’s feigned disappointment came to him. “Come on, that’s tame.”

“Not spicy enough,” Ophelia agreed.

Like twin devils, the two laughed. “Be spicy. Just once, you sweet vanilla boy,” Hamlet said with another squeeze.

“What, like the c-word?”

Hamlet moved his glasses to his forehead with the back of his hand, clumsily dragging Ophelia’s arm along in the motion. In his eyes, and in hers to match, there were tears. “Puh- _ lease _ say the c-word,” he wheezed.

“ _ Please _ ,” Ophelia echoed.

Unintentionally forceful about it, Horatio squeezed back, tomato-faced to the furthest degree. His lips moved, and he heard himself, but all he took in from the world around him was the look he caught from the cashier, still inside, eyebrows raised by the stiff pillars of apathy mounted on her tired eyelids. Everything else hit him afterward, fading in as if he was experiencing the transition from slow-motion back to regular pacing. For the most part, it was the side-splitting and extended laughter of the other two vertices on the jackass triangle, and his world, admittedly, didn’t extend much further. For the most part, he decided he didn’t mind. Ophelia, even, he didn’t mind. He laughed for himself, expelling some of the heat that had settled in him, and was the last to catch his breath as the noise died to a dull couple of sighs.

And as if it was a scheduled opening, Hamlet then cleared his throat, taking back his hands for himself, one for his phone to find a suitable point in his playlist and the other to clear the remaining tears from his eyes. His smile found a comfortable place to stay while his thoughts moved elsewhere. “You, um, you can’t get mad now,” he said finally.

Horatio disliked the feeling of his empty palm, and he clung to Ophelia’s remaining contribution to his other hand. “You keep saying that. I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

The prince slid an earbud in, bringing his glasses back down over his eyes. He stood up. “It doesn’t matter that much. Come buy another scoop with me. For the road.”

Despite his reluctance, Horatio rose and reclaimed his hand from Ophelia, as Hamlet had somehow made it clear the second trip inside was not meant to include her. From the table, she made a playful motion as if her heart was breaking, tilting her head back and feigning death with another round of laughter in the purest display of humor Horatio had seen all evening. He smiled genuinely and chided himself for it on the way back to the counter, where Hamlet considered another round of rum raisin versus the potential of cherry garcia, determined this time to pay for himself, regardless of the inconvenience it would cause. He tangled his fingers in Horatio’s sleeve the moment he came close, leaning into him as he settled on a scoop of both flavors. “We could do this all the time,” he said, sliding a bill over to the cashier. “Like when we were kids.”

“We could, if you want.”

“If  _ you _ want.” Hamlet’s eyes were on him, steely from behind the shades. He took his ice cream and began picking it apart, chocolate chunks first. “Would you want that?” he asked quietly. “Me and you and Ophelia.”

The air conditioning hit hard against Horatio’s spine, chilling him all the way to his shoes. He looked over his shoulder, to Ophelia at the table through the foggy glass. She waved, and he turned away. “I’m not sure what you’re asking,” he said, gripping the countertop with a hand that had almost waved back.

From the prince’s earbuds, a wordless ballad. He ate cherry pieces one at a time until there were none, and he watched Horatio until his attention was drawn to the same place outside. Though he still had the rum raisin left at the bottom, soaked in the melted remains of the cherry on top, he found the garbage and abandoned his work. It was the only trash at the bottom of an empty bag. He lingered by the door. “This morning,” he said, “I told her I loved her.”

Horatio had heard him very clearly. “What?” He’d heard him, but his mouth moved on its own.

“I told her I loved her. I told her in front of all of her friends.”

“Why?”

“I said I’d like it if she returned my feelings.”

“ _ Why _ ?”

Hamlet reached into his pocket with one hand, up to his ear with the other. He removed his earbud. “Are you mad?” he asked, turning, removing his sunglasses, tucking them away somewhere.

Something unnameable was balling itself up in Horatio’s throat. He shook his head and blinked several times over. “I’m not mad.”

“But you’re upset.”

As hard as Horatio tried to swallow, he couldn’t seem to manage. All he could make motion of in his throat was an amalgam of noise, the midpoint between coughing and whimpering, and all too pathetic to be made in front of the cashier, who seemed to be doing her best to mind her own business in the enclosed space. “I’m not upset,” he managed.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you upset.”

“I’m not upset, I’m just…,” Horatio trailed off. He sat against the counter, trying to swallow again, trying to rub his eyes before they even started to wet.

“But I think I understand why you're upset, and I want you to know I acted under the intention of negating that with a number of upsides.”

“I’m not upset, I just said. I’m not.”

“You're upset because you're under the assumption that my declaration of love for Ophelia negates any undeclared feelings for you, right? Which I thought about, and I came around to the conclusion that there's no basis in that because those are two different notions entirely.”

“Will you shut the fuck up, I said I wasn't upset.”

The cashier had pause in her trapeze act of pretending she wasn't in the room to stare at Horatio for a hot minute, his volume having gone from zero to sixty as fast as he had suddenly started crying. There were tears, legitimate waterworks, try as he might to prevent them. He was by every definition upset, and his speech had crossed over into a steady and unattractive blubber. 

“What do you mean, ‘two different notions’? A-a-and you shouldn’t go assuming anything, you're ju-u-u-ust forming a baseless conclusion!” he sobbed, pressing his palms so roughly against his eyelids that he saw stars by the time he’d dried up any sort of metaphorical well.

The prince seemed taken aback in a way that suggested that he had planned the conversation, and that plan was not at all panning out in reality. He leaned against the door, hands finding refuge in his pockets. “It’s not baseless, I drew from what I understand about the concept of the modern love triangle. It’s social science. But if you're not upset because you think I don't love you, then I don't know why you are.”

“I'm not, though!”

“Horatio, you're--” Hamlet looked to the cashier for a stack of napkins and brought them forward, using several to try and manage the mess of the other’s nose, “--You’re clearly upset. I'm sorry. But also I proceeded with the knowledge that the situation has it's benefits, and will continue to have benefits if you tell me why you're upset so I can adjust my process accordingly.”

“Can you talk like a human being while you're consoling me.”

Hamlet offered a solid, stiff round of back pats. “There, there. What's...uh...what’s got you down, then…?”

Horatio looked at him through look gaps in his fingers, and now, unsightly folds in the crumpled napkins. “You're an idiot. I’m not upset. I'm mad, even though I promised, because you're an idiot.”

As payment for the cashier’s sudden interest in the drama unfolding in the few cubic feet of the ice cream shop’s interior, Hamlet discarded the used napkins on the floor. “You promised. But also, why, specifically?” he asked, feeling around for the proper volume and a tone that didn’t sound canned.

“Because you've got the nerve to blow me, and then Ophelia gets poetry and an open confession? Are those the two different notions, Hamlet? Because that's like breaking the wishbone and getting the short end, but also the short end gives you salmonella or something. She got an open confession.”

“Because she wouldn't have assumed without me telling her that I loved her--you know I love you. You know that, right? Horatio?”

A new wave of tears came along. Hamlet held a hand out for more napkins, only to find the cashier had gone somewhere. Maybe to get a broom for the growing dune of napkins piling up around their feet, maybe to avoid the further awkwardness of bearing witness to the ensuing meltdown. Horatio wiped his nose on his shirt sleeve. “I know, I--it’d just be nice to be explicitly  _ told _ befo--to be told before a-a-anybody else,” he said, punctuating himself with a few strong sniffs.

“Yes, but we didn't set a precedent for anything like that. You never told me anything explicit. I had no example to follow.”

“So, what, the precedent that was set was that I’m the type of person to express that kind of thing verbally? Because that’s wrong. That’s so wrong.”

“It’s hypocritical,” Hamlet replied, now leaning around the counter for the napkins just out of his reach. He climbed where he wasn’t supposed to in order to get them. “You can’t expect me to be the type of person to express it verbally.”

“But you did. You expressed it verbally to Ophelia. You just said. Don’t call me a hypocrite while you’re trying to console me.”

He held out another few napkins and remained on the counter, gaining his first height advantage in a long time. “If you didn’t get it from the context that I’ve tried very hard these past few years to create, I can express it verbally, if that’s what you want. If you’ll stop being mad. But I consider it very embarrassing. I’m afraid you’ll laugh at me.”

“You can’t just tell someone you love them so they’ll stop being mad at you.”

“Would you stop being mad at me if I did, though?”

“No.”

Hamlet placed the remaining napkins on top of the glass case separating him from the ice cream. He leaned forward, risking a loss of balance as he knelt over the counter’s edge and cupped his hands around Horatio’s face. “I love you. Please stop being mad,” he said. “I love you so much that when I saw you again after coming back from my recital abroad I felt my heart explode a little in my chest because you’d gotten taller, and I thought I could keep as satisfying an image of you in my head as your image in reality, but that didn’t hold out to be true. If we weren’t in public I would have run to you and done something romantic in an overbearing sort of way. This is all an entirely different notion than what I told Ophelia, I promise. Please stop being mad, it’s killing me.”

“I wish I could tell people that the prince of Denmark isn’t scary at all, he’s the type to beg when he doesn’t get what he wants.”

Hamlet had heard him clearly. “What?” He’d heard, but didn’t understand at all; the conversation was far beyond the hypothetical conversation he had planned out beforehand. His mouth moved for him.

“Just thinking out loud. I love you. I won’t stop being mad because I love you so much that the thought of you loving someone else more than me is preventing me from keeping my promise and abandoning my anger. If you feel like Zeus, feel like Hera,” Horatio said.

“I don’t love anyone else more than you.”

Having forgotten the prince’s precarious position at the counter’s edge, Horatio then took a step back, catching the other only as he slipped forward. He inhaled as if he was going to find something useful to say in the air instead of the staleness of the old building and the scent of the ice creams beside him. “Did you tell Ophelia that, too?” he croaked, now tired, and supporting the prince’s weight instead of helping to steady him.

“Yes.”

“What?” Horatio held the prince by his shoulders. He’d heard him clearly, but-- “That’s terrible, seriously?”

“Seriously. Here’s where my mention of upsides come in. After I told her I loved her, we talked further in private. She said she thought I was gay, and we had a long discussion about my sexuality that made me uncomfortable, and I’d rather not repeat it unless you’d really like me to, and I asked, as the long and short of it, why she thought that. She then brought you up, and of course I was able to segway into why I felt the need to confess to her in the first place. How I feel, in that instance, I said, was secondary to the primary reason why, which was convenience. When she brought you up, I then asked if she had an issue with those feelings I had for you, and she said no, though she admitted to needing further explanation. After that, I thanked her for being understanding and asked for her help. One upside is that, on some level, I have a beard now.”

The sun was now dipping down below the line dividing the cornfield and the sky, and the prince was monologuing with his face pressed into Horatio’s chest. His hands found their way into the fabric of his shirt.

“I realized I can’t stop lying, and it’s selfish to think I could, but what I can do is lie more frequently and more effectively. I won’t quit piano, and I’ll be even nicer to people, and if everyone thinks I’m an upstanding young man who’ll graduate a year early and marry Ophelia, they’ll cut me a break, maybe. I’ll have a bit of room for stuff like this, maybe. And you won’t get in trouble because of me if Ophelia’s there, maybe.”

Horatio wrapped his arms around Hamlet to the best of his ability, unnatural as the position was. “Maybe. But that’s a really roundabout way to do things,” he said.

“You know me. Roundabout solutions.”

Closing any gap between them and gently pushing the prince back to a place of stability on the counter, Horatio pressed a kiss to his head, relishing a bit in the softness of his hair before letting him go. He watched him reach for a cup and made half an attempt to prevent him from stealing more ice cream. Half. Hamlet had pressed a spoon into his hands before sliding back onto the floor. “I love you. I love you, so don’t be mad anymore,” he said, licking the entire surface area of the mountain he’d scooped himself before offering it up.

“I’ll talk to Ophelia in private and get back to you on that,” Horatio replied, suddenly reminded of her presence at the table outside; there she was, still waiting, chin in hand, eyes on her phone, sun on her face.

A chunk of the stolen, tongue-ravished ice cream slid down his throat. He realized this was nothing like when they were kids. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> true to his very canon form, hamlet talks a lot. his hobby is creating problems for himself and not being able to convert his thoughts to words.


	6. Ring Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions. 
> 
> And it's thursday already.

“So, you love him?”

“Yup. You love him, too.”

“Yeah. What do you love the most about him?”

“Nothing in particular.”

Hamlet had invited him over, and yet Horatio sat by the pool table without him. To be more precise, he sat by the pool table with his hands folding tightly in his lap while Ophelia fished the balls out of their pockets. They spoke under the pretense that Hamlet would be back from whatever errand he left to complete some time soon, even though what he had promised to be five quick minutes was turning into twenty.

“If you had to pick something,” Horatio mumbled.

They had breached the surface beyond the sea of their usual routine, violently pulled out of the water by the prince himself. He loved the both of them, and he told the both of them, operating under the mechanism of his mind, convincing himself that they were now all on the same page. Desperately, Horatio wanted to be convinced just the same, and when he watched Ophelia move daintily from pocket to pocket, he came close, but the nature of whatever harem they were forming continued to evade him. She smiled again, as was her disposition, and he felt a headache settling in his temples.

“If I had to pick something,” she said, dropping the balls one by one into their triangular frame, “I love the way he still doesn’t know how to order at a fast food place, even though we’ve been to a couple. His first instinct is always to sit and wait for his order to be taken, like the huge, rich dork that he is. It makes me laugh every time.”

Though her arms were miniscule in comparison, Ophelia then traded the rack in for a pool cue, holding it beside herself for a moment to marvel at how closely it matched her height. She then let it fall across the table to point at Horatio, holding it out like a shotgun.

“So, what about you? What do you love the most?” she said.

As she fired, complete with a self-made sound-effect, Horatio tensed, caught up now in a topic of discussion he considered, for the most part, forbidden unto himself. Nothing about Ophelia’s echo of his own question rang true of a trap, but he waited for someone to pull the curtain and catching him verbalizing feelings he really shouldn’t. “It’s hard to pick something,” he said, quiet to avoid capture.

“Isn’t it?”

Ophelia startled him, striking the cue ball and shouting in unison with it. From the table’s edge, she was beaming. She had sunk three balls from the get-go. “But then, you kind of feel like a lame-o because he’s like...prince of the lame-o’s.”

“ _Right?_ ” Immediately, Horatio’s hand shot to his mouth. He blushed, looking to Ophelia and realizing, yes, that was his instinctual response. That was his word vomit.

And it made her giggle. He felt as if he was descending into the inferno.

“Totally,” she said. “It’s really hard to see what everybody around here finds so fascinating about him. So, he skipped a grade and he’s got longer eyelashes than other boys in his class--so what, you know?”

Horatio’s voice snaked out from behind his palm. “You can’t leave out his butt. Every girl in our class has a blurry pic of his butt on their instagram, I think.” He was burning.

“His butt? I mean, sure it’s nice, but I’ve seen about a thousand of the same picture of his dumb face. His classic expression.”

It was as if his brain had been disconnected from the rest of his body. As if there was a band of tiny people usurping Horatio’s control of his movements with the sole purpose of making him gush in an irreversible manner. He was trying his best to mimic Hamlet’s resting expression. “You mean this--the thing where he just naturally looks like he just woke up? Like he’s absolutely disillusioned with the human race?”

Ophelia pointed fiercely at him. “That’s the exact face! Like, you’d think people would notice that he doesn’t smile unless he’s prompted to! Like some kind of robot! Oh my God, he would be so mad if I told anybody else that. Oh, you are a blessing, Horatio,” she breathed, sinking another few balls.

“Am I?” With his same hand, Horatio was hiding a smile; he wasn’t sure how long it had been there, but it was quick to dissolve. “...You’re not going to tell anybody about this, then?”

The cue ball danced off of the table’s edge, careening into the viridescent side of the last solid color before pushing it into a pocket. Without warning, Ophelia tossed Horatio the stick, and it was a wonder he was able to catch it. “Tell them what? You mean, am I going to out you?” she asked, soon shaking her head. “I like this. I don’t know if you know this, but when we were younger and we all spent time together as if it didn’t matter, I really enjoyed myself with both of you guys. You both hit puberty and made it all complicated, and I don’t see anything wrong with getting back to the basics.”

Horatio stood and surveyed the table. The stripes, all but one, were left for him. He leaned in to line up a shot. “Things are different now,” he said; he hit the cue too firmly, sending it skipping over his target. “It’s love, now, not...running around in the orchard playing pretend.”

“You sound stuffy. What’s the difference between hanging out and being in love?”

Another shot in, this time missing the cue completely and hitting the table’s edge, Horatio stared up at Ophelia with the stick to guide him. “It’s different...It’s more serious,” he said.

“Do you hear yourself? What do you love the most about Hamlet--no, why did you fall in love with Hamlet in the first place?”

Inferno. Horatio’s eyes avoided her, and as he went to take his next shot, he was foiled by the sudden influx of music over the house’s sound system. At least, through the shocking amount of _Sleeping Beauty_ piano arrangement, he knew Hamlet was lingering somewhere downstairs. He hadn’t left again. “I fell in love with him when he...made me read all the books off of the banned books list with him in the summer before seventh grade.”

Again, Horatio was recognizing the warmth with which the memory burned in his chest. He could hear Hamlet humming to himself below, perhaps in the kitchen.

Ophelia leaned over the table, chin resting in her hands. “And what’s so serious about that, you know? I fell in love with him when he borrowed a pair of my sweatpants and socks and asked if he could watch something with me because he was in a bad mood and couldn’t pick a movie for himself. We watched the Disney version of _Mulan_ , and he sang along under his breath. Sometimes love is just hanging out but with a different label. It doesn't have to be serious, you can just have a good time.”

As if the information had been robbed from him in the last few moments, Horatio could no longer form the bridge needed to properly line up the cue stick. His hand felt foreign to him, though he made an attempt at the thirteen ball regardless. The cue grazed its side, pushing it further from the pocket it sat near. “Are we supposed to be having a good time right now? Is that what we’re doing?” he asked, now making an attempt to return the stick to Ophelia, to end his suffering if only slightly.

She wouldn’t take it. “I’m going to figure out how to make you genuinely like me.”

“I like you,” Horatio responded, sounding as if he completely and totally did not like her at all; he was truly earning his spot in satan’s mouth, he thought.

With her short, pudgy fingers, Ophelia wrapped a hand around the end of the cue stick, pushing it down to the tabletop. There, she aimed it, moving Horatio’s hand back down to the end herself. Echoing from the living room below, Hamlet had begun his own rendition of the entire _Into the Woods_ soundtrack, out of order _._ Horatio smiled to himself, taking another shot. Though he didn’t pocket anything, he had at least hit a ball with a reasonable amount of force. “If you can like him, I think it shouldn’t be too hard to like me too,” Ophelia whispered, moving to peek over the handrail at the activity happening on the floor below. “Maybe I’ll start acting more like him. I can’t sing ‘Your Fault’ though. I don’t know how he gets by singing all the parts himself.”

“I think he’s actually planning on trying out for the school musical this year. They’re doing _Cinderella_ ,” Horatio hummed, shooting again, pocketing the ten.

“You mean he’s planning on trying out for the prince in a play? The prince is trying out for the prince--they’re just going to give it to him.”

Horatio sighed, hitting the eight and watching it sink at the furthest corner of the table. “But the thing is, he’s always planning on trying out. Every year. He never follows through with it.”

“We can cheer him on.”

The cue ball rolled into another pocket. Horatio set the stick down, resting his hands on his hips. “I don’t think we have the power to sway his decisions. Afterall, he’s started this harem without our input.”

“I feel like a harem is more people.”

“What, you want to invite Laertes?”

Ophelia stuck out her tongue. “I’m just saying. I think a harem is at least three or more, and usually it’s all girls. We’re just a threesome. A triumvirate. A troika.”

“I like triumvirate.”

“You’re so thirsty for ancient greece.”

“And you watch anime, what do you want from me?” Horatio whined, retrieving the cue for a second taste of his own lack of skill; he shot, missed and allowed himself to actually laugh about it.

Ophelia gave him a small round of applause, which segwayed into clapping on beat with her words. “ _Naruto_ isn’t even that bad! What's bad is that one super long book about the guy that kept getting lost and cheated on his wife a bunch that they made us read in class.”

“Are you talking about _The Odyssey_?” Horatio snorted.

“Yeah. He gets back home finally, and his dog dies. What's with that?”

“It’s a show of his great loyalty! It's touching! And the story’s definitely not in my top ten of literary classics, but you can't deny it's place among them! It's a pilgrimage for both the protagonist and the reader!”

“You really do get fired up about this stuff, huh?”

Horatio side-eyed his reflection in the glass of a cabinet behind him; he was getting red in the face, and his only remedy was to run a not-so-casual hand through his hair to rearrange his bangs. “I guess so,” he said. “But you hear everybody talking about finding your passion to be successful or whatever, so. Not that every particular passion will make you successful. Classics probably...won’t do that. Yeah.”

With a deep sigh, deeper than he would have expected of her, Ophelia leaned back against the railing. “Hamlet was talking to me the other night about stuff like that. Passions, and how we don't really have those. You've got a leg up on us.”

“You really don't have anything?” Horatio asked, finally returning the cue stick to its place among its brethren. He hadn’t heard of any lack of passion on Hamlet’s part, and for that he was more attentive.

Ophelia shrugged. “I like plants, but I don't wanna like, _do_ that as a thing. Like, I don't care about knowing all about them.”

“And Hamlet doesn't…?”

“Doesn't have a passion for anything? Yeah, no, I asked him about it in the first place, and he got upset. He said it doesn't matter because he's already going to end up taking over for his dad in a few years,” she said, looking down at, presumably, Hamlet in the living room.

The unspoken idea that he didn't have to, that perhaps the prince could easily choose otherwise, lingered in the air for a few moments, but didn’t come to vocalized fruition. It was idealistic at best, considering his disposition as an only child. Somewhere in the trek to that point in the conversation, the music had been paused.

“He can still have a passion for something, maybe--but then, you don't really need a passion, it doesn't matter if you have one,” Horatio rambled, talking with his hands now that they were free. “Passion might just be a filler word to make people like me feel better about their hyper-fixations…”

Somehow, they'd both missed the sounds of feet pounding up the stairs, socks sliding across the polished wood floor. Hamlet slid until he was close enough to wrap an arm around a column between himself and the pool table. He had an earbud in, picking up where the home stereo had left off. The other half of the pair sat loosely in his hand. “What about hyper-fixations?” he asked, sizing up the both of them, as well as the position of the remaining balls on the table; in no time at all, he was moving across the room to retrieve the cue stick and finish what Horatio had left behind. “How long have you guys been up here?”

“A good half an hour,” Ophelia replied, moving as he moved to get out of his way as he pocketed the remaining balls.

Hamlet looked at her, still bent over to sink his last target. With a click of the stick against the cue, he sent it rocketing into the corner pocket. “I forgot anyone was here. I took a nap,” he said, shifting his attention to Horatio. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. We...had a nice conversation, actually.” Again, Horatio felt as if he had lost in something, as if he'd failed somewhere in hating the four-feet-ten-inches of pleasantness across from him, but moniker spoke for itself--she was just so damn pleasant. She was smiling, he was blushing. A win in a loss.

“What were you talking about?” Hamlet continued, now rearranging the balls in their rack on the table, following a pattern in his head only privy to himself as he dropped them into position.

“How much we love and care about you,” Ophelia replied.

The prince cocked a brow, examining Horatio for the telling part of his face that made it impossible to hold onto a lie. His search came up negative, and while he didn't smile, he seemed satisfied. With the balls aligned neatly on one end of the table, he put the rack and cue stick away, slowly sinking to rest on his heels. Like dye in water, his ears began to redden. “... _Oh_ ,” he said suddenly, voice quiet. “Was it a long conversation?”

“Half an hour,” Ophelia replied, coming close and kneeling down to meet him.

Hamlet buried his face in his knees. “You can talk about other things. You have other mutual interests,” he groaned.

“Do we have those, Horatio?”

“No.”

Hearing another long groan, Ophelia dished out a round of soft pats on the prince’s back, pulling him closer when he was ready to release his face again to the open air. While he wasn't pleased with the affection, he didn’t protest it. Instead, he beckoned for Horatio to join the two of them on the floor, where they sat together listening to whatever he had playing on his phone at the lowest volume, Hamlet’s earbuds discarded somewhere for the time being. If this was the final circle of hell, for the time being, Horatio found comfort in the devil's mouths. It took several verses of several songs before they were interrupted in the form of a single, jarring buzz and the subsequent text message from his mother, reminding them of the nature of the inferno once again.

 

_**Have you picked out something nice for the funeral tomorrow?** _

 

As if by summons, the earbuds returned, and Hamlet went pale. On his phone, he opened his calendar and hovered over the date, staring at it, expecting it to change from what it was, and when it didn't, he turned the phone screen off for a minute before typing out a reply. His free hand curling into a fist, and on the last letter, he muttered almost inaudibly, “I forgot.”

He repeated himself as he rose and went downstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to include more Ophelia, who, for the most part, is down for most stuff. she's a cool gal who has her shit together for the most part, to make up for everyone else who does not have their shit together.


	7. Acts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions.
> 
> And the funeral began twenty minutes later than it was supposed to.

Though the funeral was at two, Horatio awoke early. He fished his nicest clothes out of the closet and ironed them in the quiet of the morning, before the only other member of the household was awake to ridicule his efforts. His breakfast was light, and he settled in his room to read with his phone carefully laid within reach, leaving only to bring a blanket out of storage to combat the sudden settling cold that had replaced the prior half of september. For a while, in this manner, he was alone, and when his phone rang, he had expected an alternative to what he received. The number was nowhere near as familiar as the voice on the other end.

“May I speak to Hamlet, please.”

Gertrude, unnaturally unable to mask her inner turmoil.

“He’s not here?” Horatio replied, hearing a deep static that he assumed was, in its original skin, a sigh.

“If he’s not with you, then where would he be?” she snapped, catching her tone and commanding it again by the last syllable. “He’s been gone all morning.”

Horatio’s gaze shifted from the now drizzling rain out in the yard to the glow of his alarm clock in the corner. It was nearly one-thirty. “I’ll try calling him,” he said, already shrugging on a jacket and shoving his feet into his nicer shoes.

“Don’t you think I already tried that? He won’t answer.”

While Horatio didn’t know how to explain to Gertrude that her son was less likely to accept her calls than his, he had lost his ability to in an absent search for an umbrella. His mind was already elsewhere, and his responses became limited to simple and feigned indications of listening before he hung up. He stood out on the porch, where the signal was the strongest, and waited again with the phone pressed to his ear. It took receiving Hamlet’s voicemail several times over before he gave up and stumbled out into the rain.

           Once he'd gotten to the end of his driveway, arm held weakly above his head to block the constant and unavoidable drizzle, Horatio discovered he didn't have a clue where he was planning to go from there. With a hand hovering over the screen as a shield, he sent out text messages, one to Hamlet, one to Ophelia. ‘ _ Where are you _ ,’ to the both of them, though from Ophelia he received an immediate and expected response. Something about being at home still, something about asking if he was okay, and he shut his phone screen off without replying. Yet, as he set out into the street, she kept texting:

 

**_at home. are you ok? is hamlet with you?_ ** , sent 1:40 PM

**_horatio_ ** , sent 1:41 PM

**_??_ ** , sent 1:42 PM

**_he might just be brooding somewhere. don’t_ ** **_  
_ ** **_miss the funeral for it unless you want to_ ** , sent 1:45 PM

 

Horatio stared at the messages from the porch of a house that had long since been foreclosed, only a few lots down from his current dwelling. It occurred to him that he hadn’t decided whether to go for his own sake or not, whether he would set aside time to mourn for his own sake. Whether he needed to mourn. 

In his usual memories, which were sparse and often unvisited, Horatio found Yorick to be an accompaniment on the basis that he filed his childhood in terms of things he remembered Hamlet doing. The day Hamlet began his phase of interest in archeology. The day Hamlet fell in the pool. The day Hamlet ranked his favorite colors on a long sheet of paper in crayon. Horatio had been there, and Yorick had been there, and as far as their interactions went, Horatio hadn’t previously thought of them as important. 

The day Hamlet began his phase of interest in archeology, and Yorick took them to the library to look at books on fossils, assisting Horatio in getting a library card. The day Hamlet fell in the pool, and Yorick taught them both to swim, Horatio having to pretend he didn't know how so as to not embarrass the young prince. The day Hamlet ranked his favorite colors on a long sheet of paper in crayon, and Yorick entertained Horatio in the meantime by teaching him how to draw pyramids that really looked three-dimensional.

That man, whom Horatio only remembered in the present on the decaying porch of a house that had long been left vacant, was dead. 

 

**It's the funeral home in town, right?** , sent 1:56 PM

 

As fast as he could travel with an arm over his head and the rain growing heavier, Horatio ventured to town, reaching the main street only after his jacket was thoroughly soaked through. From there, he walked to the cemetery, ducking under as many canopies as the local businesses had to offer, feeling a disruption in his stomach.

There was the day Horatio had had his last pair of nice pants shrunken in the wash, and Yorick took him and the prince shopping for new ones. The day Horatio let the prince coax him into playing in the lake in his church clothes, and Yorick taught them to skip rocks. The day Horatio survived his first and only car accident, and Yorick brought the prince to visit him with a basket of apples and a coloring book.

By the time Horatio reached the funeral home, he returned the considerations of his childhood back into their corner of his subconscious. At the front steps, in the present, was a call for his attention to shift. There, shrunken in on himself to ward away the weather’s chill, was the prince. His hair was unbrushed and, along with his clothing, it was surprisingly dry, as he'd settled in a place beside the door where the overhang protected him. However, despite the well-kept funeral attire, he gave off a sense that he didn't belong where he currently was, sitting slouched with deep shadows carving their places beneath his eyes. Before he noticed Horatio approaching, he couldn't focus on anything in particular, and when he did take notice of the other, he still seemed to look through him.

Though it wasn’t shocking that he was the first to speak, somehow, Hamlet was the first to ask the question that Horatio already had waiting on his lips, ready for departure. “Where were you?” he said in competition with the sounds of rain and of Horatio jogging over to take refuge beside him. 

“Looking for you. Everybody's been looking for all morning.”

Hamlet frowned more than his resting expression had original provided for him. “I've been here,” he said. “What do you mean, ‘all morning’? What time is it?”

Horatio checked his phone, though he already knew. “Two-ten.”

“How long has it been two-ten.”

“...A minute or so.”

Against his expectations of getting shoved for the misplaced wit, Horatio was left untouched, stared at as if he was lying. The bags beneath Hamlet’s eyes were profound. “You don’t remember calling me this morning?” he asked.

Beads of water rolled down Horatio’s forehead, and he made an attempt to clear them with a wet jacket sleeve. He shook his head.

“At three,” Hamlet clarified; he dug around for his phone in his pocket, swiping around until he got to the call history. There, his thumb stuck in place, and his brow furrowed. “I must have...deleted it,” he said.

The truth--that Horatio hadn’t called--mingled uncomfortably with the idea that Hamlet had been sitting where he currently was for twelve hours or more.

“But you don't remember calling me,” Hamlet repeated.

The truth mingled, specifically, in the pit of Horatio’s stomach, already unsteady and growing moreso with every passing minute. “It was early. I might've been half-asleep,” he lied, the look of dying light in the prince’s eyes nauseating him, the prince’s slow nod putting pain in his chest.

“You called and said I was late. You kept saying I forgot, and I apologized, and I started getting dressed when you hung up.”

The fact of the matter was that, the day previous, Hamlet had sent Horatio home, and they hadn’t, to Horatio’s knowledge, spoken to each since. He’d gone to bed, slept undisturbed, and spent the morning in the aforementioned sequence of quiet. As long as Horatio now waited, Hamlet’s face showed no signs of breaking, nor did his tone suggest he would admit to it all being a joke. If anything, it snowballed from there, downhill, into territory that was difficult to both comprehend and respond to.

“That wasn’t you knocking on the sliding door, though, was it?”

Rain. Hamlet’s eyes matched the color of the rain, but were rubbed dry. He’d been sitting on the funeral home steps for eleven, twelve hours. 

“Hamlet, what are you talking about?”

His fingertips, especially, had grown cold. “Somebody knocked on the glass and told me I needed to hurry. They said to come out quickly because they were waiting, and I was late.”

“Are you okay?”

Hamlet pressed his palms into his eyes, sighing, yawning and nodding again. “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy,” he breathed. “I’m fine.”

Whether or not he was, they stood together. On the prince’s insistence (carelessly disguised as a tired whim), the conversation was over, and he made the fact clear by ducking inside. In narrow avoidance of the approach of the rest of the funeral party, Horatio followed. The interior was a league quieter without the rain to impact the atmosphere as it had outdoors, now forming puddles and carrying the beginnings of fallen leaves in the muddying ditches surrounding the lot. At the furthest corner of the main room, Hamlet sat at the end of a pew. He’d reached around to the back for a bible, flipping through it idly and keeping his eyes away from the casket awaiting company at the front. 

“ _ I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will.  _ Matthew, chapter eleven. Crazy shit.”

Horatio felt a weight on his shoulders as he walked down the aisle and sat down. “Crazier than Leviticus?” he asked, some distance apart from the other, but close enough to be heard.

Hamlet offered a stiff smile in reply. Not his People smile. Not his Horatio smile. He flipped a few more pages, again reading aloud. “‘ _ Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit...You have not lied just to human beings but to God.’ When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. _ ”

“God can be a little unfair.”

This time, a stiff laugh. With it, Hamlet clapped the bible shut, dropping it on the vacant space beside him. “Own up, God. If you’re going to kill one liar, you should start killing the other ones that are left over,” he said, directing his thoughts at the ceiling.

“He’s been playing it cool since the flood,” Horatio commented.

Hearing a sudden clap of thunder above them, they were reminded of the rain, and hearing the rest of the Kings and company filing into the room behind them, they were reminded of the circumstances. Hamlet’s mother immediately rushed to his side, fussing over him as respectfully as one could with the casket yards away from them. His father did his best to distill her need to fret, moving the bible from the seat to his lap as he shooed her away from the time being. He then opened the good book and traced a finger along the page until he found a verse that satisfied him, though he wasn’t actually reading anything. Instead, he leaned to Horatio, whispering to him, “Where was he?”

“Here,” Horatio replied; he stood up and went to Yorick’s side, avoiding the follow-up of just how long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> demons, maybe


	8. Average

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions.
> 
> And feeling incorrect as a human isn't really a side-effect of ZzzQuil, but it's best to just ignore that for now.

On their third formal rendezvous as a triumvirate, the three stood beneath weak fluorescent light, hands entangled in an Ophelia-Horatio-Hamlet pattern. At one end, Ophelia used her free hand to rub her eyes and catch her yawn. On the other, Hamlet used his to examine the variety of sleep-aids the Walmart pharmacy had to offer, non-prescription, one by one. It was late october, and he’d gotten into the habit of pursuing late night excursions, this particular excursion being the sudden product of Ophelia’s need to intervene. She’d told him it was time to start repairing his already obliterated sleep schedule, though he was skeptical of the potential of something off the shelf. As well, he’d grown used to the feeling of being only a percentage of himself, the other portion swallowed by studies, extracurriculars and frequent, lavish public appearances. He slept over lunch, and he dedicated his spare time, sparse as it was, to spontaneous displays of affection. Horatio in particular received an extravagant amount of kisses, though the reflection of the circumstances at hand soured them for him in the moments afterward. 

They spoke of sex late in the evening, but only spoke. A comparison of notes with Ophelia led Horatio to the knowledge that, when the subject arose, Hamlet was immediately disinterested, try as he might to seem otherwise. The cause, or any discussion on sexuality, was his lowest priority, and it quickly irritated him if either side of the triumvirate pursued the line of dialogue to understand it. Discussions even loosely tied to his state of being irritated him. It was easiest to blame it all on a lack of sleep. Looking for a solution to his excuse irritated him.

“Just pick the one with the prettiest box art. We can come back later and try a different one if it doesn’t work,” Ophelia sighed, squeezing Horatio’s hand and, in turn, coaxing him to squeeze Hamlet’s in a chain to get his attention.

“I don’t have time to keep trying a bunch of different ones,” he snapped, searching the text on the box in his hand for the line prohibiting a joint usage of alcohol. “And none of these will do a fucking thing about my nightmares, so--”

Horatio squeezed again without meaning to. “You’re having nightmares, now?”

“They aren’t relevant. They just happen.”

Ophelia was nodding along as if it was common knowledge, ever having the leg up on Horatio in terms of triumvirate participation for living in the same house as their mutual object of affection. 

“Frequently?” he asked.

“It’s not relevant.”

“Hamlet.”

The prince shied away from a response, deciding on one of the first medications he’d looked at. In conjunction, he selected a bottle of something-or-another for headache relief, as well as a number of dietary supplements. Ophelia held what he was unable to, and he used the back of Horatio’s hand to rub his eyes, unwilling to break the chain to do it himself. Afterward, it was self-checkout, one-handed, and sitting in the parking lot, on the hood rather than in the car. It was a wonder how Hamlet had driven them there one way, let alone how he would get them back, but for the time being, Horatio held him by the waist, preventing him from sliding back onto the asphalt. Ophelia still held his hand, and when he let himself lean into Horatio, between the two of them, he felt warm. It was one in the morning. “Father told me he was concerned when he drove me to school last week. I finally got mother off my back, and now he’s concerned,” Hamlet said, laughing, reaching for the bag of medication now in Ophelia’s grasp.

She held it away from him and kissed his forehead, to which he kissed her back. “We’re also concerned. I can see where he’s coming from,” she said.

Hamlet rolled his eyes. He wrapped his legs around Horatio, pulling him closer. “Horatio’s not concerned. He knows better.”

If there was someone that knew better, it certainly wasn’t Horatio. He’d been concerned for a much longer period, he was sure, than Hamlet’s father, who had delayed his attention to the facts for as long as his work would excuse him to. But he wouldn’t say that, and Ophelia shot him a look for his chosen lack of response. Hamlet dusted his face with undeserved reward, basking in the light of the Walmart sign and the few streetlamps that still had yet to die. On the drive home, he made a request for conversation to keep himself awake. It was then that Ophelia repaid him for his harshness.

“Sex. I want to have sex soon.”

If it bothered him, Hamlet tried his best not to show it, except through the gradual increase of the car’s speed and the tightness of his grip on the steering wheel. “How soon? I’m very tired,” he said.

Horatio rode shotgun. His hands were closed firmly between his thighs. 

“Are you interested in having sex soon if soon is within the week? Within the week,” said Ophelia.

“Would you like to have sex with Horatio instead? I'll still be tired within the week most likely,” said Hamlet.

Horatio pressed his lips together in a thin line. He rode shotgun, with Ophelia behind him. “I would have sex with Horatio, but I’d feel bad having him as a stand-in for yourself. Are you interested in having sex with me?” she said.

“I don't know. I'm tired.”

“Are you interested in having sex with Horatio?” she said.

“I don't know.”

“Would you grow interested if you watched me and Horatio have sex?”

“I don't know.”

Shotgun was unforgiving in its proximity to the prince, who had forgotten his phone at home and could not find anything worthwhile on the radio. His cheeks were growing red, and Horatio was only able to get a glimpse at their change in hue under the three or four street lights it took before they were on another long stretch of non-urbanized road. “He doesn't have to watch us have sex or have sex with us if he doesn't want to, within the week,” he said, now fixing his gaze out the window.

“I never said I didn't want to.”

“Do you want to?” said Ophelia.

“I don't know.”

They past a cornfield, a different one than that behind the estate. Horatio was, of course, reminded of the one behind the estate in turn, and what had transpired there. “Did you not want to do what you did a month ago, when we were drunk?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

They were going very fast.

“What did you do a month ago?” said Ophelia.

“Why did you do it if you didn’t want to do it?” said Horatio.

Seventy-four miles per hour. The fog on the street was unforgiving. Regardless of whether or not he was satisfied with it, Hamlet turned the radio on and up. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to. If I didn’t want to I wouldn’t have done it. It’s not a matter of what I want and don’t want, anyway.”

“What did you do a month ago?” Ophelia repeated.

“Why did you do it if you didn’t want to do it?” Horatio repeated.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to!” Hamlet repeated. 

At a chorus, he braked, sending the car to a screaming and unsteady halt, but not before gravel caught in the tires, up into the windshield, and they swerved to the road’s edge. He hit his head on the steering wheel, a hand forcing the radio off again, another thrusting the door open after the initial shock of the impact. Out in the street, he pulled his jacket off and discarded it, and without realizing it, Horatio had a hand of his own clapped to his chest, his heart beating faster than it had in his first (and what he had thought would be his only) car accident. If this could be considered his second. He was eleven then, and the feelings he had were like anything else of himself: unvisited. In the present, however, he felt a rush of terror as he watched the prince sink to a crouch between the car and the dotted line dividing lanes. He held his head in his hands. 

Fortunately, Ophelia was quick to get out, Horatio soon following. In the night air, he shivered and forgot his anxieties temporarily in the temperature change. Was this an accident, all things considered? The car, if slightly dirty, was at least intact, and circle around to the driver’s side, Hamlet spoke from the ground. “I never said I didn’t want to. I said I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ll probably know when I’m not tired, but that won’t be within the week. I didn’t know when we were in the cornfield, I just did it. What I want and don’t want doesn’t matter anyway, so long as I do it right. What I want and don’t want doesn’t matter.”

“Obviously it matters. That's what consent is,” Ophelia said, training her voice to be softer, but especially articulate. She held the bottle of sleep aids in her left hand. “I didn't mean to upset you this much, I'm sorry.”

“But you meant to upset me in some regard?” 

“I’m tired too. Sorry.”

With thin, cold fingers, Hamlet reached for the bottle, opening it after some issue with the cap. He swallowed a few pills dry, stretching an arm out to fish for Horatio, who drew near to accommodate him. As was likely expected of him, Horatio then ran a hand through the prince’s hair, scarcely brushed but consistently washed, soft and aromatic. Honey and something. “The two of you aren’t virgins, then,” he said, tilting his head up to lay a kiss in the center of Horatio’s palm.

It hadn’t quite felt like one in the morning until that point, where his words echoed and the fog and the corn were their backdrop. It wasn’t that early morning until Horatio and Ophelia exchanged looks to confirm it, sharing a single-syllable ‘what’. Then, following, a ‘no’ from the two of them. An admission of virginity. Horatio, in particular, found the concept of even the possibility of a budding sexual life within Denmark laughable--as laughable as the larger percentage of the school found the concept of living, breathing, physically needy homosexuals.

Hamlet narrowed his eyes, again looking for lies in either them. “How are you supposed to know anything about being interested or not interested if you’re both virgins?”

“What? You just know, I guess,” Ophelia replied, finding her place on the ground beside him and patting the gravel to bring Horatio to their level as well. 

He wouldn’t sit. Hamlet had a fierce grip on his wrist. “Okay, but what the fuck are you talking about?” he said, riddled with confusion that wasn’t common to him and frustration that was. 

Ophelia shrugged. “You know…Like, at some point I looked at you and thought, ‘you know what, I’m into it. I’d tap that.’ I decided it’d be fun, and I’d be cool with it.”

“Right, and I thought--,” Horatio paused, thinking carefully about what he was about to contribute. He hadn’t planned to say anything, but it happened, and Hamlet was looking at him, and he had to finish the sentence now. “--I thought that, uh, you’d. Look good naked.” It was a partial truth. A TV-Y7 version of the truth. “Does that make sense…?”

“No.”

“Does my thing make sense?” Ophelia asked.

“Not at all.”

If they were cowards, or perhaps less oriented toward a conclusion, they might have climbed back into the car. Horatio might have driven, despite the lack of a license, and Hamlet might have fallen asleep in the back seat. Instead, they moved to the road side to avoid a passing car, sitting in a line where the broken pavement met the dry dirt and pebble ditch. There was the shadow of the church steeple in the distance. Horatio averted his eyes as Ophelia carried on. 

“When you jerk off--you jerk off, right?”

“Of course.”

“When you jerk off, what are you jerking it to?”

“What?”

“You know. When you’re slapping God in the face with your preferred hand, what are you thinking about?”

“Are you supposed to think about anything in particular…?”

At that, Ophelia looked to Horatio, eyes wide, seeking input. He blushed. No, he’d been blushing for a while at that point. He hugged his knees. “...Renly Baratheon from  _ Game of Thrones _ .”

They were not cowards, and they had not reached their proper conclusion, but Ophelia had snorted. She had covered a smile with her hands, had tried apologizing when Horatio rose and began walking home; he didn’t trust himself to drive. He didn’t have a license. Hamlet trailed after him, grabbing onto the back of his shirt to keep up. “I don’t get it,” he clamored. 

“I don’t know, he’s kind of a twunk, and there’s that one scene with him and the other guy, and--”

“No, in general. I’ve never thought of you or Ophelia naked. What am I supposed to take away from that?”

“I don’t know, Hamlet! It’s almost two in the morning, and you don’t have to have sex with anyone if you don’t want to!”

Hamlet pulled Horatio to a halt. While his hands were busy wound in fabric, he was the emotional equivalent of a clenched fist. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to, I just don’t get it.”

“So, what then?”

The morning, as it stood, went unconcluded, and on their fourth formal rendezvous, the prince was the first to get naked. It had taken not one, but two weeks to fit between the highlighted sequence of events in his planner, and when the moment came, Horatio had only found out by way of a poorly worded text from Ophelia containing the phrase ‘his mom finally left’ and a gif of Renly Baratheon. When he arrived, wearing turtleneck-cardigan-sweatshirt combo setup out of spite, he entered to the home stereo playing Arcade Fire and the prince unceremoniously removing his pants. “We’ve got three hours to figure things out before everyone gets back from dinner. Ophelia’s shaving, maybe? Or putting on perfume or something,” he said. 

Horatio released the Walmart bag he’d had in his left hand, letting it fall to the floor while he took his shoes off. He kicked them into a pile beside the door, reaching into the bag and pulling out the box of condoms and a bottle of lube. Those he slide across the floor to Hamlet, who picked them up to examine while Horatio removed his sweatshirt. 

“We probably have stuff in the bathroom somewhere. You didn’t have to buy anything.”

“I’m not using your dad’s condoms.”

“Oh.” 

Somehow, watching the prince open the box and fiddle with a condom made Horatio a fraction less self-conscious, now bare-chested and folding his clothes from the floor. He set them in a pile. Hamlet opened a wrapper for nothing’s sake, for having something to fiddle with. There, in the kitchen in Versace boxer briefs. That’s what it said, right there on the waist band that Horatio was staring at. He took his pants off and pushed a hand through his hair, feeling the weight of the satirical kind of love he was pursuing. The kind where Arcade Fire was playing in the background and the prince of Denmark was flicking an unused condom into the trash like he’d just received it in sex ed, where Horatio didn’t receive any kind of readable reaction from the other regarding his partial-nudity as he stood up. Ophelia complimented the choice of color in his underwear, if only in consolation as he followed the prince to the bedroom, where he stood in the doorway wondering what to do with himself.

Again, unceremonious, Hamlet sat on one end the bed, chin settling in hand. Ophelia sat on the other end, and they were still for a long time waiting for the other’s initiation. For a long time, Horatio exchanged awkward looks with the two of the them, one extra awkward look with Versace, and was the first to actually become aroused. He wouldn’t risk looking at the ground because he wouldn’t risk looking downward. He pulled at his earlobe. “Anyone can start whenever,” he said.

“Well, can I kiss you?” Ophelia asked; she wasn’t wearing a shirt or a bra. Hadn’t been.

“I guess?”

There, in the bedroom, Horatio was composing a list of shames. Ophelia’s tongue in his mouth, that was one. His hands on her chest, that was a second and third. Hamlet’s casual expression and fixed gaze on the two of them, a fourth. No one had made the move to turn the music either down or off, a choice in which “We Don’t Deserve Love” expressed its rhythmic freedoms. After the feeling of eyes on his back, Horatio felt the prince’s lips, trailing up to his neck. The fifth shame was in half-abandoning his heterosexual pursuits for what truly boiled in him. One hand was still in commitment to its position, the other departing from Ophelia’s chest for the greener pastures of Hamlet’s thighs. To feel him grow hard in Horatio’s hand and to push him down against his own sheets was only a shame in the continued audience of Ophelia, who offered kisses to the both of them and smiled against the curve of Horatio’s neck. He pulled off and disposed of Versace, forgetting it somewhere on the carpet below to take Hamlet’s ass into his own sweaty palms. Between one and two fingers, Horatio questioned what he was doing and how he had strayed so far away from the indie rock of the Montrealer, engulfed now in a mixture of heavy breathing, princely moaning and Ophelia’s absurd and uncontrollable need to giggle. “Hamlet,” she said. Not cried, not breathed. Said. “You could participate a little more.”

They shared a kiss. “Are you having fun right now?” he asked. Not breathed. Asked.

“An amount of fun, maybe,” she said, guiding his hand.

“Horatio, are you having fun?”

He winced. Horatio was inside of him, and to be suddenly reminded of this technicality, was intensely embarrassed. “Yeah,” he breathed, hyper aware that he was the only one breathing things instead of saying them.

“Really?”

“Sorry, do I look like I'm lying or something?”

“No, it's just--no. Never mind. Keep going.”

A part of Horatio wished the music was louder, as he had also become aware of the noises birthed out of flesh-on-flesh contact. He sped up his pace, ashamed of the sound and the motion and of Ophelia’s tongue again, until he was made to realize the vocal subtleties of Hamlet beneath him. 

“You're making a face,” Ophelia commented, moving the prince’s hair away from spot on his forehead where his sweat had kept it.

“Yeah?”

“Not like a sex face, though.”

Hamlet looked away as if he'd suddenly taken on Horatio’s emotional awkward disposition. Not to the level Horatio experienced it, of course, where he wasn't sure whether he should keep going or pause. The level he was on still left some room for classic irritation. “Please keep going,” he repeated, weaker. Pleaded. 

He couldn't possibly be on Horatio’s level, where the plea absolutely destroyed him and shames six through ten were formed of the request that Hamlet keep pleading. In finishing quickly, Horatio was spared of hearing that sort of unpracticed pillowtalk spill out of his mouth, but it was still clearly finishing first. 

Ophelia was still somewhere between his lips and shoulders, leaving marks as a pastime, and before he caught his breath to respond, Hamlet rose from beneath him to take over. He left Horatio with a long, firm kiss, and when he pulled away, in his profile, Horatio was witness to an odd sense of obligation among the beads of fatigue in his temples. If Hamlet himself was aware of it, he pushed it to the back of his mind as he let Ophelia guide him to what he assumed would be a conclusion of events. Preconceived notions filed away, Horatio bore witness to the then methodical procedure he took, putting his lips, hands and member wherever prompted until the combination of them gave Ophelia the sub-par sort of satisfaction she had expected. 

Further kisses peppered the final leg of their sexual odyssey, sloppy and widespread from face to chest to back to wherever until they collectively sunk into Hamlet’s sheets in an Ophelia-Horatio-Hamlet pattern. Exactly who had gotten up to turn the lights down and the music off was lost in minor exhaustion and shuffling fabric, as well as in Ophelia jokingly noting that, if they fell too deeply asleep without an alarm, they ran the risk of being caught together in bed. She was the first to fall asleep, however, unless one considered Hamlet’s lying still with his eyes trained lazily on the far wall a form of sleep.

In the dark now, Horatio rested his face the prince’s neck, taking the liberty to kiss him again and wrap an arm around his waist from underneath the covers. Without the music, the breathing and the motion, the room seemed empty. Somewhere, in a lapse in Horatio’s consciousness, Hamlet found his clothes and climbed back in bed. When he heard the front door opening, he made no attempt to move, though in another lapse Ophelia had already gone, eliminating a partial danger. The bedroom door then opened and closed, washing light from the hall over his face for a brief stint while he feigned sleep. By the time Horatio stirred, he had yet to dip into anything genuine. He took what he could, indulging in the warmth he got from the other’s breath on his back until his sleepy musings pieced together into coherent thought.

“What’s wrong?” Horatio murmured.

Hamlet reached for where he kept his phone, unable to find the earbuds so often coiled around it. Face already plunged deeply into a pillow, he couldn’t lift himself to look for them. “Nothing. ‘M tired,” he replied.

With a heavy arm, Horatio pulled him closer, squinting into the light of the phone screen from over Hamlet’s shoulder. He watched the prince’s fingers, thin and cold, stop in their continuous scrolling through what appeared a near endless playlist. They hovered over the title now on center display. “Was that fun for you?” Horatio murmured.

Arcade Fire, “Song On the Beach”. Hamlet played it aloud, quietly, between just the two of them, unable to find the earbuds. He was dissatisfied with the sound, but left it as it was. Before he spoke again, he swallowed something welling in his throat to make room for the response, misshapen and weak as compared to the standards of his usual dishonesties.

“Yes.”

It was enough. Horatio kissed his neck again, as if he deserved it, and found his sleep-aids somewhere on the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully this all comes across correctly? also i do recommend Song On the Beach, it's a really beautiful piece with a nice 10 hour version on youtube. if anyone actually looks up and listens to the songs mentioned in every fanfic out there? does anybody actually do that?


	9. Instead of Sentiment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions.
> 
> And it's no longer orchard season, really. But there's not much else to do in town.

Horatio looked at his phone again. 

 

**_Thank you, I love you._ ** **,** sent Friday 11:40 PM

**_Bare with me:_ ** , sent today 2:03 PM

**_As per the norm, I have an outing with mother_ ** **_this afternoon.  
From what I understand, we _ ** **_are going to check in on things at the orchard._ ** , sent 2:03 PM

**_She’s very upset likely because she isn’t all_ ** **_that fond of the orchard, and I’d prefer to_ ** **_  
_ ** **_have a plus one while she is upset._ ** , sent 2:04 PM

**_I told her I would invite Ophelia as I usually_ ** **_end up doing to pacify her, but Ophelia said_ ** **_  
_ ** **_she does not want to come._ ** **,** sent 2:04 PM

**_She said, ‘That sounds terrible, good luck.’_ ** , sent 2:04 PM

**_She also sent a string of those emojis_ ** **_that are laughing so hard that they’re_ ** **_  
_ ** **_crying, as well as the emoji that depicts_ ** **_the soul leaving the body._ ** _ ,  _ sent 2:05 PM

**_tdlr; please cancel whatever plans you have_ ** **_and come to the orchard with me.  
There _ ** **_will be complimentary hot cider and a_ ** **_variety of donuts._ ** , sent 2:06 PM

**_Please._ ** , sent 2:07 PM

**_Also, whether or not you decide to come,_ ** **_please delete the last nine messages as well_ ** **_  
_ ** **_as this one off of your phone._ ** , sent 2:08 PM

**_Thank you, I love you._ ** , sent 2:08 PM

 

There was never a moment when he considered not jumping through the proverbial hope; Horatio’s movement to delete the messages was immediate and practiced, and aided by the presence of the sender in the seat behind him, casually clicking and unclicking his pen throughout what was supposed to be an uninterrupted lecture on the Enlightenment. To the chagrin of his teacher-and-student audience, he held a special place in his heart (or maybe his head) for philosophers, which he considered reason enough to not have to give the lecture his full attention. 

 

**I also texted Ophelia** , sent 2:10 PM

**and she said if I was going to keep letting you** **force me to do things with you, I had to force you to** **  
** **do at least one thing with me.** , sent 2:11 PM

**I couldn’t think of anything good or fun to force** **you to do with me though, I just have a lot of laundry** **  
** **to do tonight. So I’m negotiating for** **that right now.** , sent 2:12 PM

**_Horatio what the fuck are you talking about_ ** , sent 2:12 PM

**We can go to the orchard with your mom, but after** **we have to go to the laundromat** , sent 2:13 PM

**Please. But also you don’t have to if you don’t** **want to** , sent 2:14 PM

**_What the fuck is a laundromat_ ** , sent 2:16 PM

 

They would head to the orchard directly after the last bell. Though Hamlet’s car was still somewhere in the school parking lot (likely parked in a crooked angle over two spaces), his mother picked them up, unable to win in the practiced argument Hamlet had for Horatio’s presence. Horatio was not told to delete the last few messages despite how it may have been expected of him, so he kept them. He took a screenshot of the last bit to send to Ophelia as they climbed in the car.

Finding the driver unfamiliar was, to Horatio, a bitter reminder of Yorick’s passing, given his occasional need to fill the position as was his mode of operation in the King household for many years. It was as if the sadness and the reminders had come at a delay, as they were now more than two months out from the funeral. It had been even longer since any of Yorick’s service had taken place, over a year most likely, but the absence seemed to take place most wholly, to Horatio, in the present moment. He snuck a glance at Hamlet’s profile, hoping to find something of a similar feeling in his expression, only to be let down by the modest attractiveness of his features, which was composed specifically for his mother. From the outside, it looked as if he felt nothing. In the front seat, reflected back in the rear-view mirror, Gertrude looked the same. They exchanged a practiced conversation.

“How are the AP classes going? Do you like them?”

“They’re surprisingly easy. English is a bit more challenging than I imagined it would be. One would think you’d be able to get by simply by being wordy enough, but that isn’t the case.”

“But you’re on top of things?”

“Of course.”

Horatio folded his hands in his lap. Hamlet’s sense of ‘being on top of things’ involved setting aside time from ten at night to four in the morning to study. They lingered in the school bathrooms that morning while he splashed water on his face so as to appear at least a fraction of his public persona, a person that wasn’t irreversibly sleep-deprived. 

“I’m proud of you, Lettie. I know this is a lot.”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle, honestly.”

To round out the dialogue, they smiled at one another, pretending as if the back-and-forth was on the level of emotional warmth it needed to be on to sustain the both of them. They pretended as if the mother and child from Yorick’s era hadn’t evolved into eccentric elites who had lost the ability to truly understand one another. Under that guise, they left the vehicle for the orchard fields and the path up to the mill, where they would briefly escape the cold.

The mill’s interior was entirely packed with people visiting under the same pretenses of warmth and sustenance, and Hamlet made a show of small talk with the visitors who were both attractive and in his age group as he made his way to the back of the space. Somewhere in the shelves of preserves and seasonal product there was the essence of the family’s humble beginnings, though now Horatio struggled to make his way through the proof that those beginnings were long past. He trailed behind Gertrude, who maneuvered between spices and honey sticks as if she was allergic to it all, and eventually they made it to the counter in the back. Hamlet slid behind it, greeting workers as he bypassed a line to the hot cider, filling three cups and more for strangers for the sake of maintaining a facade of greater involvement. It was downright confusing to Horatio that no one saw his handing off of a donut to child in full view of someone’s Snapchat video as a calculated PR move. Still, he felt a skip in his chest when he received the same treatment, a cinnamon sugar donut, hot cider and a smile he was sure was more personal than what the prince had been delivering to everyone else. It was definitely given over a longer period and with an intentional amount of eye contact. Definitely. 

The donut didn’t last, a portion of it crumbling in Horatio’s hand as he stepped outside. By accident, he became comfortable in a position at Gertrude’s side, the two of them having slipped out the back to look out over the pumpkin patches that had been picked apart by the celebration and passing of Halloween. They sipped their cider once in unison, waiting for the prince to abandon his people and join them. Horatio would have liked to sit, but to maintain etiquette, he couldn’t lower onto any of the old wooden benches without being preceded by the woman beside him, who would never sink down onto their weathered frames so long as her sense of superiority was intact. They stood, sipped and withstood the occasional breeze. Having thoroughly stained the styrofoam of her cider cup’s rim, Gertrude found a place to engage in unwelcome conversation. “I’m relieved the season’s ending,” she sighed.

Horatio kept his responses short and toneless. “You’re not a fan of autumn?”

“I can’t stand this place in the fall. I was never suited for this business,” she said, looking through the window pane in the door at her son; he split a plain donut among a group of children, convincing at least three of them to try dipping the piece in cider. “He’s not suited for it either. If we’re lucky, we can abandon this common business for the greater world of politics, sell this horrible place for a lump sum or something. Move on to claiming senate seats.”

“Is Hamlet’s father looking to sell?”

“Lord, no--and that’s the issue, isn’t it? He’s built up too much sentimental value for this place. He brings you and Lettie around all the time as children and chalks it up keeping it for the preservation of memories.”

True, Horatio could see the corner of the patch he and Hamlet especially frequented when they were younger. There, at the front, left-most portion of the field were the biggest, brightest and strongest pumpkins Hamlet’s father had told them, because that was what you saw from the street. The best pumpkins, the things that make memories. “I think sentiment is a good reason to keep something around,” Horatio replied, going to take another sip of cider and finding nothing left in his cup.

Gertrude mounted a hand on her hip. Staring at the same corner, she saw nothing. “Sentiment won’t do a damn thing to sustain what we have. People weren’t made to cling to the past.”

Hugging his cup in his hands, watching a passing car, Horatio nodded without meaning to. It was a type of car he recognized, a hatchback in a time when hatchbacks should have been consigned to oblivion, even in the poorer parts of town. “I suppose not,” he said, wishing then that he’d truly clung to nothing.

Hamlet emerged from the mill, adults and children alike waving at him as he smiled at them through the window. He had one earbud in, and Horatio was unable to catch a glimpse of the song playing before he slipped his phone into his pocket. With a deep sigh, he threw away the remainder of the cider he carried with him. “Sorry, I couldn’t find a good place to duck out,” he said. “Just when you finish one interaction, Susanna and Judith from down the road want to know whether you prefer cinnamon or powdered.”

“And what did you say to that?” his mother asked.

“I said I didn’t have a preference, that they each have their unique sweetnesses, when really I prefer plain. I don’t know why, but they were tickled pink with my answer.”

“If you’re not careful, you’re going to make Miss Ophelia jealous,” Gertrude hummed, the corners of her lips turning upward more naturally than they had all morning. 

Hamlet squinted, not grasping her meaning at all. “I don’t think she’s the type to get jealous,” he said; Horatio nodded, aware that she lacked that flaw and, of course, jealous of the fact.

“All women get a little jealous,” Gertrude insisted, “Especially over charming young men like you.” 

She went to adjust Hamlet’s bangs, and he went a bit red in the face. “ _ Mother _ ,” he groaned, yet he let the action run it’s course.

Because having had her chance to fuss, Gertrude allowed an example of laughter that was legitimately pleasant, nay, legitimately legitimate. “What? You’re charming, aren’t you? Isn’t he charming, Horatio?”

Horatio tried not to sound gay. Truthfully, he tried all the time given his habitual circumstances, but here he  _ really  _ tried. “Yeah.”

To which Hamlet pulled away, biting his lip and really not trying at all. His mother said something else that likely didn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things, and they further pursued their leisurely tour of the orchard and whatever the approaching winter hadn’t already claimed in that respect. Compared to the very peak of fall, the collection of trees which were still threatening to produce something out of natural spite for the cold lingered without their favored spectrum of colors. Instead, their thin, wiry branches provided a palette-appropriate backdrop to Hamlet’s choices in grays and browns as he strolled among them, though they made his mother, in rich blue and bright lip, look comically misplaced. Color alone may not have been her motivation, but Gertrude moved through the field in a hurry, agreeing with staff where she needed to in order to cut conversation to the bare minimum. Yes, the raspberries would definitely grow back even stronger next year. Yes, they should plan for more Macintoshes, those are a town favorite. Yes, that certainly is a large wasp nest for late in the season, let's move along. No, Hamlet, the wasp nest would  _ not _ make a good instagram post.  _ No _ , Hamlet. Hamlet.

The prince had to be dragged back to the mill, and if not for the collection of people happy to see him there again, he might have received a talking to. Instead, he earned Gertrude’s stiff hand on his shoulder and her commentary on how like his father he was, which she found to have the opposite effect she intended. To be like his father, Hamlet beamed. To have a son like her husband, Gertrude seemed deeply overwhelmed. Horatio made the mistake of making direct eye contact the moment she released her son to return to the hot cider. “He's been difficult today,” she said, pulling Horatio to the seclusion of the winery before he could avoid it.

He put his hands in his pockets, feeling cramped among the old, wooden shelves that had likely been there since Farfar founded the place. There was a bottle on the top shelf in the corner that had been opened, one that had tasted terrible and given Horatio his first drinking experience some time in middle school. Hamlet had climbed onto his shoulders to get it, and in the end, fallen and scraped his arm so badly that he had to find his father for a bandage after putting the bottle back. “He's usually difficult,” Horatio replied. “I think that's just his personality, maybe?”

“As if I want him to be known for something like that. You find him difficult?”

“I guess?” No, that felt like some kind of betrayal. Making Hamlet’s mother feel valid felt like a betrayal. Horatio shoved his hands further into his pockets. “But it's not like I'm an expert at dealing with things? I don't know what I'm talking about, sorry.”

“Oh, don't be sorry. I wish I was an expert. You think I’ve read even a single book on parenting?” she laughed, and waited for Horatio to echo the laugh before continuing. “When he made friends with you, I thought, ‘thank God, someone who tucks their shirt in and doesn’t have dirt all over their face.’ I don’t know what your mother did, but I wish I had the mind to find out before she--”

“Yeah, that’s too bad.”

While Gertrude eyed him, unused to being interrupted, Horatio met her gaze, his jaw locking up as he pulled his lips together. He couldn’t see his reflection anywhere, but he sensed the heat flowering in his cheeks. He pleaded for the prince to appear from somewhere with a free earbud and the intention of intervening. “Sorry,” he added, unsure of what he was apologizing for.

Gertrude pursed her lips. “It was really a tragic loss. And you know how people talk about those things. We were all lucky Yorick was unimaginably enthusiastic about the idea of keeping you around afterward.” 

She ‘we’ as if she excluded herself. Horatio pleaded for the prince to appear from somewhere with a free earbud and the intention of coming between them. “Very lucky,” he said dryly.

They stood still under the lingering and truthful hypothetical that, in his youth, Hamlet could have easily found other, newer friends. It couldn’t be held against him, as he fell thoroughly within the vein of a rich elementary schooler lacking in personal agency, and to think otherwise on Horatio’s part was decidedly selfish. To think the handful of hospital visits and navigation to his shifting residences was something that could be accomplished without Yorick’s consistent facilitation was ridiculous. In post, as per the norm, Horatio felt a rising sadness, which he swallowed until he could find a moment to excuse himself. He found Hamlet in the pumpkin patch and took the liberty of feeding an earbud into his ear without asking. He rubbed his eyes to the eccentricities of Shostakovich. Some waltz or another. They stood a foot apart, conscious of the people around them.

“I tried asking Mother what a laundromat was. Turns out she doesn’t know either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gertrude isn't intentionally a bad person, she just spends a lot of time thinking about what other people will think. Also I feel like the longer I keep Horatio's origins vague the more it seems like I'm making all of you play tragic backstory jeopardy with him or something lol sorry


	10. After-Taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions.
> 
> And there are certain conversations the prince will only have with one half of the triumvirate and not the other.

_ Alien  _ was playing on a TV in the corner, somewhat blurry and inaudible among the whirr of the machines adjacent. The sun had dipped below the pathetic collection of buildings on the other side of the windows lining to parking lot, and as the titular monstrosity burst violently from Kane’s stomach, Hamlet pulled back to wipe his mouth on the back of his hand. He reclined on the floor, leaning against one of many unoccupied driers, watching Horatio tuck himself back into the uniform slacks which were, at the moment, his only pair of pants not swirling around in the laundry. “So, are you still mad?” Hamlet asked, now searching for the vending machine he knew to be by the door.

A sign at the counter read, ‘Back in 15 minutes,’ though it was now going on a strong forty-five. Of all the colored loads he had going at the moment, Horatio’s complexion had grown and now stayed congruent with the crimson in the cycle closest to him. “Would you stop doing this under the assumption that you need to to make me feel better? Seriously?” he said.

“Was it bad…?”

“Wh--no. But I feel like an asshole when I go into it under the assumption that you  _ want  _ to do it and then you give me the impression you feel like you had to! Does that make sense?”

Hamlet frowned and hopped to his feet. He gave a fleeting glance at the escalation of events on the TV before returning his attention to ridding himself of the lingering taste in his mouth. “So, you don't like my motivations?”

“No, I don't. I want you to. Uh. Do stuff like this for a good reason and not--you know, ulterior motives.”

After a moment of feeling around, he found his wallet in his back pocket, though he didn't have small enough bills to make any use of the contents. “What the fuck kind of motives am I supposed to have?” he said casually, staring into the machine at a Cherry Cola that evaded him. “You want me to say I do it for the taste or something? Because it tastes like shit. Like black truffle but fucking...too salty.”

Horatio pulled a handful of quarters loose from the roll he had for the laundry, walking stiffly over to the machine to insert them and get the drink himself. “That's not what I mean at all, and I really wish you wouldn't say stuff like that,” he replied, thrusting the drink into the other’s waiting hands.

“What  _ do _ you mean?” Hamlet moaned, growing exasperated with both the conversation and the cap, which he was failing to unscrew.

“I mean, like--,” Horatio paused, reclaiming the bottle for the second it took to get the cap off, “--I get the feeling you only do this kind of stuff because you feel obligated and not because it's fun.”

“Let’s talk about something else. Let's talk about what Mother said to you at the orchard like we were talking about in the car.” 

Somewhere behind them, a cat led a crew member to certain demise. From the TV screen, there was a subsequent scream, and Hamlet turned as if it startled him, though his feigned terror was the product of menial effort as a means of avoidance. He took a long swig of cola. “Let’s talk about this shitty movie. Ridley Scott, am I right?”

“Hamlet.”

“I read somewhere that this was Sigourney Weaver’s big break.”

“Hamlet, please.”

“Oh, and I remember why I remember this building. I think Father owns this fucking building. Or the whole strip of buildings or something. That's what it was. And we don't get to talk about shit that makes me uncomfortable all the time, so stop it.”

Horatio slipped another few coins into the machine and got himself a water. When he crouched to pick it up, he stayed in the position, bottle in hand. “You don't have to force yourself to do things for me, that's all I'm saying,” he mumbled.

“That’s all? Horatio, you're the fucking king of forcing yourself to do stuff. Take your own goddamn advice.”

“That's different.”

“Like hell it is. Literally that whole orchard trip was one big, shitty you-forcing-yourself-to-go-so-I-could-purposely-leave-you-with-my-mom scenario. Because I knew she was going to harass somebody, and I didn't want to be it. It was the shittiest thing that I've done to you in a while, and you're worried about whether or not I genuinely like dick in my mouth.”

Having the circumstances said aloud to him, Horatio felt the subsequent anger boiling in him, another emotion he’d have to swallow. For the time being, he expressed what he could in the vice grip he held on his water. “I’m happy to take the fall for you. It’s not shitty. The conversation wasn’t that bad.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

Hamlet lowered himself, sitting beside Horatio on the floor with his drink dangling in a loose grip between his knees. On the TV, somebody else was screaming, and they both looked in unison to see who without really absorbing the information once they bore witness. “Why are we here?” Hamlet said finally, taking another drink.

“The unit at my house broke, and Bill said that since I’m the one that uses it the most I should be the one to pay to get it fixed. Bastard.”

“How much to fix it?”

“Most of my next paycheck, probably? I’m not giving you numbers, they won’t mean anything to you.”

Somewhere, tangled into the responses, Hamlet leaned on the other. He planted a kiss on his jawline. “That’s classist.”

“You not having a proper scale for the value of a dollar in no way benefits me, a representative of the working proletariat. It’s not classist.”

“You don’t think there’s a reverse where the proletariat can discriminate against the bourgeoisie?”

Horatio shook his head, turning to press his lips into Hamlet’s, receiving a fleeting taste of the Cherry Cola for himself in return. They left another string of kisses on each other, Horatio moving about the prince’s jawline and throat in an exploratory sense despite it all having long been familiar territory. He spoke against the span of Hamlet’s flesh. “You told me my cum tastes like black truffle, you bougie piece of shit.”

Hamlet struggled through his words as Horatio worked to leave a mark in the crook of his neck. “You should try it, it’s actually not that bad--black truffle, I mean.”

As the prince’s hands found a way into his hair, Horatio paused, caught between amusement and arousal when he remembered his anger. The growing heat in the lower part of his stomach turned over in him, souring. “You don’t have to do this if--”

“--If I don’t want to. I know, Horatio.”

Bringing his hands down to cup the other’s cheeks, Hamlet brought their slips together again, impatiently coaxing Horatio’s mouth open with his tongue. Finding a place to respond proved difficult, as they remained together for the greater part of another crew member’s death on the TV behind them. Finally, in process of working his hand up from the prince’s hips to his chin, to the point where a thumb could be held against his lips, Horatio pulled away, gaining only so much space as the thumb allowed. “Is this actually any fun for you?” he breathed.

Growing irritated, Hamlet slid his tongue over the digit until it was retracted. His palm spread across Horatio’s chest as he pushed him into the vending machine, parting his collar to work off of the newly exposed skin. “This, yes,” he said, dragging his teeth along the area until he found a good place to bite down.

Horatio shuttered; if he were less experienced, he might have let his thoughts slip away from him, but for the moment, he did his best to exercise a certain persistence. “But there’s something you’re not fond of,” he said, quick so as to release the words before his breathing hitched and he lost the use of them completely.

“You sound like Ophelia. I’ve already had this conversation with her.”

Given the circumstances--the prince irredeemably teasing Horatio’s neck to punctuate himself--Horatio was doing his best. “Can you tell me what you told her, or do I have to ask her myself?”

“I don’t like that you’re getting along.”

“I figured it’d be better for the triumvirate if I loved her.”

Hamlet pulled away from a mark he had half a mind to be proud of. “Triumvirate? Oh my God, have you been calling it that? You are so thirsty for ancient rome,” he snickered.

“Ophelia came up with it,” Horatio replied, realizing only now that it was something to be embarrassed over. He sunk into another kiss to try and avoid the flood of delayed emotions. “That was after we talked about why we--hey,” he let his mind wander away from the shame, “When did you fall in love with her?”

Hamlet leaned back, looking over Horatio in a rare moment of surprise. As if he had the capacity to grow sheepish. Surely not, surely he was only tugging on his bangs to adjust them, and not to hide his face, which could grow no redder than it was. “Why is that important?” he asked, sounding more like Horatio than himself.

Oh lord, he was sheepish. “Sorry,” Horatio apologized and kissed him again. “It’s not, I was just curious. Because Ophelia and I talked about. You don't have to answer.”

In a touch of irritation again, Hamlet shook his head. “It’s fine, it’s just. Stupid,” he replied. “It was sometime a year ago, maybe. She painted my nails for me. It was clear polish, and it didn’t matter, and we didn’t talk about it, but I started crying. Uh. And I just kind of sat there crying until my nails were dry. She said some nice stuff to me, and we, um, went to bed. 

So, I guess when I was laying next to her under the covers and everything kind of smelled like nail polish. I, uh...Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Horatio took the prince’s fingers into his own. In lieu of knowing just what to say, he remained quiet.

“It helped that she kept letting me do shit like that…,” he continued. “I don't know how, I don't even remember the sort of stuff I came crying to her about. Ophelia and I talk about more stupid shit than what you and I talk about.”

“It’s not stupid if it makes you cry,” Horatio mumbled.

Hamlet pressed another kiss to his jaw, this time uncharacteristically gentle. Then, he shoved him to make up for it. “It’s definitely stupid,” he said, rising to check on the laundry that had been beeping at them insistently for several minutes to signify it was done. He opened a dryer full of blues and grays, fishing out a warm sweater and burying his face in it. “You shouldn’t have washed these. Now they don’t smell like you. They smell like ocean breeze.”

It was too late now to keep the subject change from happening, jarring as it was, and Horatio sighed, accepting it. He made an attempt to finish his water in one go, abandoning whatever was left by the machine after he got to his feet. For a few minutes, he gave his attention to the escalating events of  _ Alien _ , finding that it didn’t hold his interest for long. He shuffled over to the dryer, and though it was futile, he did his best to wrestle the sweater away and teach the prince how to fold it. Three articles of clothing in and he realized the other’s inability to pick up the skill was purposeful. Horatio was at that point too tired to be properly annoyed. “I asked you to come under the assumption you might help me,” he said, laughing to himself. 

Hamlet smiled, balling a cardigan up in his hands before having it confiscated. “I helped you sort the colors,” he said indignantly, reaching into the machine for more clothes and retracting his hands from the load only when he found a pair of underwear.

Snatching them away, Horatio rewarded him with a kiss on the forehead. He was only partially embarrassed, riding a wave of boldness he only got from (and he wished there was another way to phrase it) the prince on his knees. With the remaining motivation, he pinned Hamlet to an adjacent washer, lasting long enough to pull the rest of his unmentionables out of the other’s reach. Once they were successfully tossed in the basket and hidden beneath another sweater, he backed away, playing the moment off as something more than absolute necessity. “How are you going to survive in college?” he murmured, remaining only a few inches from the prince’s face as he reached for the next item to fold.

“Wittenburg has laundry services.”

“Wittenburg has laundry rooms. As in you do it yourself in the basement, most likely.”

From his face alone, Horatio could see something drop in the pit of Hamlet’s stomach. He shook his head. “But you’ll be there.”

“I’m not doing your laundry for you.”

Hamlet frowned, receiving an answer he neither expected nor wanted. He closed the gap between them again, first for a light peck, then to pull at Horatio’s bottom lip with his teeth. “Please,” he growled.

“No.”

Another resentful peck. “Do you think I could get Marcellus to do it?”

“The last time I went up to visit Marcellus I watched him pick a shirt up off the floor, smell it and put it on. He sprayed Febreze on it and said, ‘It’s basically the same, bro.’ So, I’m going to go with a hard no.”

The TV flashed with the continued action of 1979, the bell on the laundromat door dinged and the two-thirds of the triumvirate split apart to the standard, heterosexual yard and a half in distance. A jaded employee returned to her position behind the counter, finally retiring the sign that had claimed her return was to come almost an hour sooner. She had a plastic shopping bag with her, and from it, she removed and unwrapped an egg salad sandwich, resting her eyes on the movie as she took her slow and disaffected first bites. “Closing soon,” she croaked, watching dead-eyed as the alien claimed the lives of Parker and Lambert.

Fearing the unlikely possibility of gaining the woman’s interest, Horatio nodded and made quick work of gathering his things. He mesmerized Hamlet with the speed at which he folded and put away the rest of his shirts, clearing the final dryer at the end of maybe a ten minute period. Already outdone but not to be forgotten, the prince brought him his water and carried the larger of the two laundry baskets. Tried to carry. It was surprisingly heavy. He insisted on at least dragging it. Lucky, he could count on Horatio being too submissive to laugh at him, instead hovering at his back and awkwardly holding the door. When they got to the parking lot, he pleaded to trade baskets, in the very least loading it into the car. In a strange trade-off, he allowed Hamlet the liberty of closing the door. It did nothing to curb his emerging foul mood, and when he got in the car, his first instinct was to reach for the aux in the dark. After finding it, he spent several minutes searching his library for a song. A few seconds of Debussy. A fraction of a top forty hit. Disney. A cover of Disney. Three different indie songs with similar beginnings. “Hey,” he said suddenly.

Horatio’s head snapped up from whatever he’d been focusing on. Buckling the seat belt or something. Hamlet held his phone out.

“Pick something.”

Having never had it asked of him, Horatio hesitated. He was unsure if the moment was supposed to mean anything, if he was supposed to act swiftly. Could he get away with picking something at random? Hamlet’s eyes remained fixed on him as he steadied himself, accidentally swiping down into territory he was unfamiliar with. He thought he knew the prince’s playlist better, or he assumed it wasn’t this much of a clusterfuck of disorganized cacophony. Without meaning to, he held his thumb over a song too long, starting it immediately sans permission. The name and artist were part of a long party of unknowns. Hamlet was no longer looking at him, and soon, the car was moving to the sounds of a tentative ukulele being strummed. Somewhere in the background, there was rain beating against a window, and overall, it was repetitive in a sense that was more relaxing than it was terrible. “Why the fuck would you scroll up?” the prince asked, too quiet to convey any kind of resounding anger.

Horatio was already reaching to change it. “Sorry.”

Hamlet held out a hand. “It’s fine, it’s just that I was further towards the top than I thought when I gave it to you.” 

The track ended, bleeding into another of similar sound quality. The rain was gone, at least. Although it was hardly late into the night, the roads they took toward the edges of town were pitch welcoming an expectedly harsh winter. The trees that usually built a canopy over the last bit of pavement before Horatio’s house were all bare, and a select couple of homes along the dirt paths had already gotten their Christmas lights on, including the barn that came just seconds before the driveway. In decorating it, the owner had unknowingly made Horatio’s own home look barren, shingles broken along the roof and porch covered in junk that was assumed to be Bill’s. There were no lights left on, and the way it was nestled back from the road made the gravel lot where Hamlet parked look eerily like the hunting grounds of some prolific serial killer. However, unphased by it, he turned the car off, leaning back in his seat and letting the music play. “Is Bill even fucking home?” he mumbled, looking to the blackened windows of the living room and beyond.

“Yeah, he likes going to bed at like eight-thirty when he runs out of beer or there isn’t anything new on TV.”

“How does someone like that get the thumbs up to raise a kid?”

Horatio shrugged. “It’s not the worst house I’ve been in, actually? And it’s probably the last unless he kicks it, because, you know, college.”

“Oh. Right. Wittenburg.”

“Wittenburg.”

The conversation broke off in lieu of the track changing again. Yet another unknown, though Hamlet’s hand lept from the steering wheel to turn the volume down. He was unable to catch the first few notes, and in them Horatio was privy to a precious few seconds of Hamlet’s own voice. He was covering something to the best of his ability which, at the time of the recording, was apparently a handful of ukulele chords. The material version of the awkward singing voice had to turn away after letting the tracks switch again, now to a full three-and-half minutes of something or another that included a bit less ukulele and a bit more piano, as well as lyrics that were likely his own invention. He pressed his forehead into the window, and when the words became unbearable to him, he slammed a hand down on the car horn. Horatio was unsure whether or not he was being given a queue to leave. He wanted to stay.

“Hey.”

Hamlet’s voice startled him. His hand was resting on the door handle.

“Why’d you only ask about when I fell in love with Ophelia?”

Horatio tensed. No, he was already tense. Always tense. The Hamlet of the unknown recordings hit the same keys in succession while the physical version spoke above him. 

“Did you want to know when I fell in love with you, too?”

He slammed a hand down on the car horn to censor something he was particularly uncomfortable with. Off in the distance, he had angered a collection of dogs, all of whom broke out into a string of howls that would go on for several minutes until the unintelligible screaming of the neighbors quieted them. Hamlet turned again, staring at Horatio over his shoulder. He’d only been able to boast blue eyes in the years prior; sometime into puberty they started muddying into a kind of slate that couldn’t as easily be complemented. 

“Well?” he said.

“...You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Horatio mumbled.

“Good, because I would have lied. Because it’s a secret. And this has already been a terrible day for me where I’ve been embarrassed so much that I would have had to kill you if you let me be embarrassed even one more time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hamlet's thoughts on class struggles aren't truly that warped, he's just looking for small talk, and for hamlet and horatio, as shitty intellectuals, that means satirical banter about marxism. because they're fucking nerd losers. 
> 
> also is anyone getting irritated with my non-committal smut yet?


	11. Beast from Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions.
> 
> And sucks to your ass-mar.

Hamlet slowed until he was travelling at the back of the group, staring at the point where the golden expanse of Horatio’s hair met the sunburn on the back of his neck. Though it was evening, the oppressiveness of the summer heat beat down on the area and left a spot there for the sweat to build up. There and on the bridge of his nose, where his glasses tended to slip down to, the prince had noticed. He’d worn the same glasses for an unreasonably long time, as well as the same backpack. Sure, he was poor and orphaned, but it had gradually been growing into a source of irritation to watch the edges of the bag’s straps rip and fray, the zipper break and front-most pocket give out. Hamlet had made many a mental note to see to it the thing was replaced, and he considered a process by which he would convince the other to get contacts. He wondered if they had passed the age where he could threaten a retraction of their friendship unless his demands were met. No, even if they hadn’t, that was a risky move. It was a valuable bargaining chip he wasn’t willing to lose over his bluff being called. For now, they would keep walking forward, and Hamlet would deal with it. Horatio looked at him from over his shoulder, face illuminated by one of two electric lanterns Yorick had bought for their expedition, the other falling into the hands of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who now marched yards ahead into the corn field. He smiled awkwardly until Marcellus shined a phone in his eyes to get his attention. “Keep up. I hate babysitting slowpokes,” he groaned, raising his voice to catch the attention of the dynamic duo that he himself was unable to keep up with. “And if you little pricks get lost and get kidnapped, no one’s going to notice you’re gone, so get back here.”

Guildenstern halted, raising an arm to grab onto to Rosencrantz’ shoulder. “We’ve been walkin’ for forever, Marce. Where’s the demons?” he said.

“I think you’re full of shit,” Rosencrantz added.

He clearly was, and Hamlet was unsure why he was the only one giving that any thought. Even Horatio seemed afraid of an unknown entity leaping out of the stalks to drag him into oblivion. Why? The house was still within walking distance. They’d gone to church enough for the idea of demons roaming the earth to be a fallacy at best. Still, he was here, humoring them, and that was enough for Hamlet to know he couldn’t be excluded from their little society of jackassery. 

“They aren’t gonna show up for all you loud, obnoxious twerps at once. They only show up when you’re...alone,” Marcellus replied, regretting every second of the three-year gap between them, four years between him and the prince, who was aware and upset by the prospect of being the baby.

“Bullshit, Marce.”

“Yeah, bullshit.”

In the moonlight, like animals, the duo was in top form. Horatio tightened the grip on his backpack straps, in contrast the furthest from whatever he considered a top form, if he had one. Maybe he didn’t. “Can we just go back inside? A-and play Super Mario or something,” he whimpered.

Marcellus towered over him, using the age gap and the lack of puberty on Horatio’s part to his advantage. “Dude, don’t be a pussy. This kinda crap is what’s gonna get ‘faggot’ written on your locker in sharpie next year. Is that what you want?”

They were going to go to the same private high school, and Hamlet was confident he wouldn’t let that happen. When he finished eighth grade and got there and prevented it from happening. Still, Horatio shook his head and pushed his glass up his nose. “No,” he sighed.

In truth, abandoning a late night hike wouldn’t be the final selling point in Horatio’s risk of being bullied, Hamlet thought. There were those glasses, the frequency at which he chose to tuck in his shirt, the fact that the shirt was a thrift store hand-me-down. The fact that everyone knew about his 48-hour stint at conversion camp that ended with his social worker coming to get him. Still, Hamlet felt the need somewhere in his stomach--or maybe his throat? Somewhere?--to argue that Horatio would be just fine. And in the prince’s fingertips there was heat, and he felt the need there to grab on and see if Horatio’s hands felt the same. To squeeze all of the warmth out of them and keep it for himself, maybe. He made a fist and imagined being tall enough to reasonably give Marcellus a black eye. None of those needs would come to fruition. 

“Gilly, wait up! You got the light!”

No more than shrinking shapes against the background of an ever-present stretch of corn, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had begun in their apparent expedition to leave everyone behind. In a very loose definition of the word ‘pursuit’, Marcellus followed, shouting after them with the voice of a parent who didn’t care. “Antsy, get back here! What the fuck, you guys! Gil!”

Horatio, however, made some effort to run to catch up. “Antsy, come back!” 

Had he missed the tone of the situation completely, where it didn’t matter? Where he couldn’t run very fast and looked like a complete loser? Either way, he held the only remaining light, and unwilling to lose it, Marcellus had to accelerate, catching him by his backpack.

“It’s all good!” Rosencrantz called. “We’re gonna go find those demons on our own! An’ if we see anything, Gilly does this sweet bird call--show ‘em.”

Guildenstern did a bird call. They disappeared into the brush.

Exasperated, but unwilling to act, Marcellus shoved a hand into his pocket. He clapped a hand down on Horatio’s shoulder. “Well, fuck. You didn’t catch ‘em fast enough.”

“Sorry.”

“You're gonna have to go find ‘em now.”

“You mean ‘we’? We're going to have to go find them?”

“No, you heard me. You,” Marcellus said slowly, as if he was talking to a wall. With his index finger, he pushed Horatio’s glasses back into position. “You're.”

As if he was a wall, Horatio’s gaze fell upon his shoes, and he went quiet, turning to look down a path that had only gotten darker the longer they had walked on it. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were distant echoes, and even more likely, they had ventured off to one side or the other to find something unidentified. As if he was a wall, or already resigned to being a human punching back, or just pathetic, Horatio was steeling himself to go and look for them. He was gripping his backpack straps for dear life, clearing the sweat off his face with his arm. Hamlet sighed, stepping in to speak for what might have been the first or second time all evening. “I'll go,” he said, shoving Horatio aside to get past him.

Marcellus shook his head, doing his best to prevent Hamlet from moving without touching him--it had, at some point, become a rule not to touch him. Instead, he picked up his pace to where he was always one step ahead, crabbing walking to either side when the prince made an attempt to pass him. “I was kidding, we can all go together if you want,” he insisted, clearly aware of the cruel fact that if Hamlet went missing, it would be an absence that mattered. People would look for him, parents would get upset.

Hamlet was confident he wouldn’t go missing. “It’ll be faster if I go alone. Take Horatio inside.” He was confident, and a part of him was eager to humor the idea that Marcellus wasn’t lying; he wanted to find a demon for himself.

“You don’t have to…,” Horatio murmured, trying to speak but trailing off, trying to make eye contact but averting his eyes. He couldn’t realistically take the opportunity and return to the house. It would make him a pussy. He had to stay.

“Just stay here. I’ll be back.”

With all of his strength and assertiveness as the baby of the group, Hamlet pushed his way off of the path. He took a detour into the thick of the crop, heading off in a direction to the sound of Marcellus calling after him. For a while, he was blind, holding an arm out in front of himself to keep the stalks out of his face while his eyes adjusted. He really had no clue how to go about finding two reckless bodies in a sea of acreage, and when he found another belt of path to walk on, he decided he didn’t really care. He was at least away from the inescapable pity Marcellus’ treatment of Horatio instilled in him. He was away from the cause of so many needs he couldn’t realistically fulfill. 

On his own, however, Hamlet absorbed a variety of nighttime ambience he was unable to hear over the needless babble of the group. Rather, there was a surprising amount of silence, cicadas and the like and the occasional presence of a passing car miles out with little beyond that. If he thought about it, he could hear his own breathing, and for a moment, it hitched, interrupted by a rustling in the corn stalks beyond. Guildenstern, he assumed, or Rosencrantz, being the louder. 

Neither, from the single outline standing on the horizon. 

When he squinted, Hamlet pinpointed the source of the disturbance to a figure alone, gray in the limited range of vision the prince had available to him. Tall, slim, and through narrow eyes, some part familiar. Struggling to find his phone in his pockets, Hamlet called out for the clarification his missing light source couldn’t give him: “Yorick?”

He hoped for a response to echo back at him in the voice of his au pair, someone he knew to be at the house, in the living room, rereading a  _ Calvin and Hobbes _ compilation for the fourth time. A bead of sweat rolled down the prince’s forehead as his own words died out in the air and his footsteps halted, replaced by the hurried and heavy padding of whatever that was in the distance running toward him. He had to remain skeptical, locking his knees and calling out again. It was Yorick by the curves in the face, the stature of the body. Maybe he moved that way, maybe his flesh was ashy and his scalp was bare, and he’d have the time join the group in the field while they were strolling in one direction. This was another joke of his, a prank that Hamlet would scold him for later. His hand finally found a hold on his phone, and without looking away or considering what it would do, he turned the flashlight on. The light effectively blinded him again, and he blinked rapidly to see the features on the approaching mass that it had defined. He was confident that there were no demons in the field despite the evidence closing in on him with tight flesh and a runner’s sprint. He could hear his own breathing. Behind him, there was a rustling in the stalks again and no more than a yard’s difference between the figure and him and a sudden hand on his shoulder and he was confident demons weren’t real. He didn’t know what this was, it wasn’t a demon, and his breathing hitched, and the demon took a sharp right into field, disappearing from his view completely. And. And. 

At some point, Hamlet had lost his footing. He sat in the dirt with his phone clasped tightly beneath the folds of his fingers, sweat building in reservoirs in his palms, on his temples and under the fabric of a shirt he’d have to throw out later if it breathed this poorly. And Horatio stood over him, lantern broken, glasses smudged. “Sorry. Did I scare you? Sorry.” 

Largely ignoring him, Hamlet rose, looking out into the distance and seeing no evidence of what he had felt so viscerally. He resented it. 

“What are you, uh, what are you looking at? Did you find Antsy and Gil, or…?”

“No.”

Turning the phone over in his hand, Hamlet read the time. It did him no good, as he hadn’t had the mind to check it preceding whatever had just taken place. He bit his lip.

“Well, I-I-I heard a bird call, I think? But I-I don’t know if it was Gil or, uh, or an actual bird.”

Sighing, Hamlet shoved his phone back into his pocket. A shiver had run down his spine, and the night air was beginning to chill him in a way he hardly preferred to the heat. “I didn’t hear anything,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants and taking a moment to actually look at the person he was talking to. Sunburnt, nervous, eyes wide to absorb social queues. “Did you come alone?”

Horatio nodded several times over.

“And did you ditch Marcellus or did he ditch you?”

He quit nodding. “A-actually I, uh, I ditched him--you didn’t hear that either?”

“I’m not omnipotent,” Hamlet said crossly, though he was growing profoundly upset in a way that involved more fear than anger.

“I thought he was pretty loud, but I guess not. Uh. I. Hit him. With the lantern. A-a-and then I came to find you on my own, but he was mad, obviously. And screaming after me, I think. I’m surprised I ran into you; I wasn’t really looking where I was going. Or. I, uh, I couldn’t see because. Uh.”

It was clear Horatio couldn’t have seen where he was going--Hamlet wasn’t an idiot. It took less than a second to notice the lantern in bits and pieces, a fraction more than that to see a pair of wide gashes on his knees from where he’d stumbled in the darkness. He stood as if they still hurt, and Hamlet was sure that if his hands weren’t still fisted firmly around his backpack straps, they’d be shaking. Hamlet wanted to grab Horatio’s hands and squeeze. He’d squeeze all of the insecurity out of them. “Why’d you hit him?” he asked instead, shoving his own hands deep in his pockets.

Was Horatio blushing, or was that the strip of sunburn across his face? “We were talking and, uh, he...he was being kind of a jerk. I don’t know. He said--”

A breeze swept over the field; Hamlet hoped it was a breeze. He scanned his surroundings, his heart slamming into his ribs as if it owned the place. It was in his ears, too, preventing him from fully reaching a confidence that he could hear a bird call in the distance. “This is stupid,” he snapped, and Horatio’s back straightened, rigid at the hypotheticals of what the nervous anger of a twelve-year-old would do. “There’s no point in wandering around out here like bait. We’re going back inside.”

“Bait?”

Though he had started back toward the house, Hamlet paused, caught up in his word choice and the fact that the fretful other wasn’t following him as expected. Indeed, Horatio was still standing taut in the middle of the path, not too close to the unknowns of the cluttered crop at his sides. Gripping that stupid goddamn backpack. 

“Bait for what?” he asked, eyebrows knitting his own chaotic form of worry into something visibly consumable. It was like extra evidence, in case one couldn’t sense the pitiful aura he radiated at all times. 

Hamlet didn’t have the time to consider. He couldn’t get his mind to focus on a good reason because he couldn’t get his mind to focus on anything other than what might just be the breeze again. What might be an afterimage of something other than Yorick. “I don’t know,” he said, trying to scrub it off of his eyes so crudely that the pressure of his palms made him see stars. He took a few steps before his vision steadied. “Can we just go inside? I wanna go inside.”

He kept walking, and in hearing Horatio’s feet drag behind him, he found himself afraid of the sound. Rather, he found himself afraid of the thought that if he turned around to confirm that it  _ was  _ Horatio, he’d be wrong. But then a hand curled into the back edge of his shirt and, hearing an apology, he was confident again. That was Horatio, shivering and limping along with his bloodied knees. “How can you see anything?” he asked.

It felt good to hear him. Reassuring, maybe. Distracting. Hamlet wanted to keep talking, annoyed at discovering his inability to speak with ease while he was still afraid. He forced his words out as quickly as he could manage. “I can’t. It’s fuckin’ dark.” He didn’t have the tools to prevent his voice from wavering.

“Are you okay?”

Shit. More words. Just keep talking. “I’m just hungry.” Dammit. Whether or not that was true, it was stupid.

From behind him, Hamlet heard Horatio unzip his backpack, having retracted his hand from where it belonged clinging to a sweaty piece of fabric. “Hold on,” he said, and when the prince turned to look at him, he caught sight of the other with the bag swung around to his front, arm digging around for something among the contents.

From the bag, out from underneath a wrinkled change of clothes, Horatio found his lunchbox. He held it out, pushing his glasses up his nose again with the back of his other hand. “I didn’t know if I was gonna be staying over or not, so Yorick helped me pack a dinner. Whenever I’m sleeping in Judith’s office, we end up having to get something from the 7-Eleven.”

It felt erroneous to take it, and even more so to disrupt the neatly packed interior, but Horatio silently insisted, popping the lid off himself. He offered up half of a turkey sandwich, and Hamlet traded his phone for it, helping the other get the flashlight function working. “You’re still staying with your social worker?” he asked through a mouthful of turkey; he found it all the more delicious knowing his mother wasn’t there to tell him not to talk with his mouth full.

Horatio stuff the lantern pieces and lunchbox into his bag, moving it to the place on his back where it belonged. “We celebrated me becoming pretty much unadoptable the other day,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I turned fourteen, and I guess in terms of attractiveness as a candidate for adoption that makes me kind of unappealing? I was looking at statistics last week. I found out the average time in foster care is only supposed to be like two years, so I think my candidacy was a long shot to begin with. I’m like a third party or an independent or something. Don’t ever let me run for student council, okay?” he laughed weakly. 

Hamlet’s last bite of sandwich didn’t sit well. He didn’t want to look at Horatio and see his droopy eyes behind his stupid glasses. It would kill him, most likely. “You could run if you wanted to; I don’t think high school’s been tainted by a two-party system yet.”

“You think?”

“Hell yeah, dude.”

Shit. He looked. He looked and saw Horatio’s eyes drop to the ground. Heartrending. “But if we’re being realistic...it’s probably not a good idea to draw attention to myself. Marcellus says I’m not exactly subtle,” he said, shrugging. 

Hamlet wanted to grab him by the face and. “That’s bullshit.”

“I guess, but...can we talk about something else?”

At some point, they had stopped walking. Everything out in the field looked the same, and it was impossible to tell how far they’d come. Hamlet got them going again. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Uh...I finished reading  _ The Lord of the Flies _ .”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah! Well, re-reading? And I was surprised at what I noticed the second time around and how looking at the first page again was like greeting an old friend--the whole scar thing, as a descriptor, I just really like that so much. That's so cool.”

The darkness gave Hamlet the cover he needed to smile. Of course that wasn't cool. He smiled from ear to ear, putting a hand over his mouth for an extra layer to hide behind. He wanted Horatio to grip his shirt again, so he dragged his feet. He didn't intend for the other to end up at his side instead, still rambling. They remained at the same pace. He didn’t intend for their knuckles to brush, halting the rambling in the midst of a quote from chapter whatever. Was he blushing, or was that just a strip of sunburn? Was Hamlet blushing? He turned away but found he was too paranoid of what lay in the darkness to keep his gaze there. He wasn’t sure if he could see movement. “I always end up feeling bad for Simon,” he said just to say something, now dredging up his base knowledge of the book. “I kind of resent Golding for writing him into a story where his wisdom means nothing.”

“I think his presence is kind of hopeful, in a way? Despite his demise. I think having him there disproves the inherent evil preached throughout the story, because even just one kid in the group is actually good. I think it means even in the worst circumstances, there’s still the possibility of kindness.”

“But the book also tells you that that kindness is, ultimately, stamped out. It has no value.”

“It’s there, though. The intention to do good in the world, even if it’s not going to do anything--I admire that,” Horatio said; his smile, in comparison to Hamlet’s own, was simple and bright and stupid because it was only there in rare moments when someone engaged him, never for anything insignificant like etiquette or pictures or people who didn’t deserve it.

“Have you ever seen yourself when you talk about books? It’s really--” A gift from God, but the prince couldn’t say that. It wasn’t realistic to think he could. “--hilarious.”

They had walked so far as to reach an incline, setting their horizon lower below them and showing them a darkened swath of land  where the paths ran scarcely about it like veins in the crop. With the house painting the edge of the field with barely a dot of light, it became apparent that the two had only travelled farther away from it, having taken the wrong direction to begin with. Horatio held the phone in both hands and replied, surprisingly less bashful than what was to be expected. “I know,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose to get a good look at the stars. 

“Sorry.”

Horatio shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ve been pretty sure for a while that it’s not just my age that’s making me unadoptable. You get a feel for the sound of your own voice if you just go around info-dumping all the time.”

“I don’t mind it,” Hamlet mumbled, devoting a portion of himself to finding the quickest way back. 

Something cutting diagonally through the thick of the field, he decided. Where the demons were. After the initial hesitation, Hamlet swallowed, balling his hands into fists because they were shaking again. He dipped down into the taller stalks, signaling with a stiff nod that Horatio follow close behind. “Keep talking,” he said, moving as quickly as the two of them could move in tandem.

“What about?”

“Anything. What was your favorite part of the book?”

“Uh, I liked the part where you find out what the beast truly is.”

“Why?”

“Because the first time I read it, it blew my mind a little. I was in fourth grade.”

Hamlet was smiling again. He was terrified, and he made a movement to cover his mouth again so the things lingering just outside of his range of vision wouldn’t see it, maybe. From somewhere behind him, Horatio tripped and caught himself with a hand returning to the sweat-dampened folds of the prince’s shirt. Terrified, but he slowed just for Horatio’s sake. So he would stay close and not lose his grip. His hand belonged there. His voice belonged in Hamlet’s ear, rambling on and on about the biblical symbolism in something Hamlet had, in truth, only skimmed, as opposed to the chirping of beetles leftover from the day and the indiscernible sound of movement whose source could not be pinpointed. God, it was loud. Chirping. Rustling. Some twig somewhere snapping in half. “Why’d you stop?” Hamlet asked, smile fading; somewhere along the line, Horatio’s voice had faded away and returned in the second half of the sentence that didn’t match up with the first. 

“What?”

The hand over Hamlet’s mouth moved to wipe the sweat off of his forehead, clearing the way for still more sweat. He glanced over his shoulder, confirming the continued presence of the stupid glasses and the ugly backpack and the person he had unintentionally interrupted. “You were saying something about the conch, and then you changed topics,” he said as slowly as he could manage. It wasn’t slow at all.

“Did you want to talk about the conch some more…?”

“No, I wanna know why you segwayed like that. So abrupt.”

“Five minutes ago?”

Hamlet dug his nails into his palm, balling a fist so tightly he was afraid it might stick. It might bleed. “No, just now. Just now.”

Similarly, Horatio’s grip on his shirt constricted as much as it could without ripping the material. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Uh. I...must not have noticed,” he said, voice shaking like a liar’s. He was a bad liar. “Can I ask you something?”

Blood. Horatio’s knees were still bleeding, maybe. Hamlet tried his best to slow down. “What?” He couldn’t.

“I, uh, heard you before I ran into you. Uh. I heard you calling for Yorick?”

“I thought I saw him.” No, that wasn’t him. Yorick was in the house. Blood. Beetles. Shit. Shit. Shit. Gift from God.

“You think he came out here to scare us?”

Gift from God. They reached another section of open path. The light of the house shown through the remaining cluster of crop. Hamlet stopped. “I thought it was him, but it wasn’t. It was--,” Words, words, words; something for Horatio, “--like a deer or something. And it scared me. Don’t tell Marcellus and them.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise. Promise you won’t tell anyone.”

“I promise.”

“If you tell anyone, I’ll be embarrassed, and I’ll have to kill you.”

“That’s okay. I promise.”

Hamlet looked back at him again. He pushed his glasses up his nose and smiled. And Hamlet was in inexorably in love with him. 

“Get contacts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has been a casual flashback.


	12. Shoganai

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions.
> 
> And it isn't a tradition, really, to put an effort it. Especially in the King household.

“I didn’t know you wore contacts.”

Horatio nodded with all the expressiveness of a mannequin. “Since ninth grade,” he said, watching Ophelia in the mirror as he slid a contact out and into its case; he became self-conscious under the presence of an audience, hyperaware of how long it took him to remove one but afraid to rush. “What did you think when I stopped wearing glasses? My eyes got better?”

Ophelia shrugged. She turned the volume on the TV down as a character on screen was violently dispatched, finding the bowl of popcorn that sat somewhere in the sea of blankets that made up her bed. “I figured you just decided you didn’t need to see that well or something,” she said, picking out a handful of the butteriest pieces for herself.

Again, the volume lowered, and Horatio combed the room for his bag. He traded one case for another, and when he was confident the prince was at the other end of the bed, fast asleep, he slid his glasses on. “When did anime get so violent?” he asked, flinching at the newly defined and admittedly excessive spray of blood drenching so-and-so with the pink hair.

Some character argued with another in japanese as Ophelia patted an open spot on the bed’s edge. Settling in with her and a blanket newly draped over his shoulders, Horatio averted his eyes, a hand in the popcorn and a hand reaching for the prince’s bangs. He moved them aside and relished in the unconscious groans of the prince in response, leaving him be only when he buried his face in a pillow. Ophelia layered another blanket over him, following a winter belief system that claimed that, in late december, you could never be too warm. She pressed a kiss to his forehead, leaning out to deliver the same to Horatio. “Did you just come here to insult  _ Mirai Nikki  _ or did you have something you wanted to talk about?” she cooed, pinching his cheeks.

Exactly when he’d become accustomed to it, he didn’t know, but Horatio returned the kiss, blasphemously affectionate. “I wanted to ask you about something,” he said, allowing her to lazily slip a piece of popcorn into his mouth.

“About what?”

“About the kind of stuff you and Hamlet talk about when I’m not here.”

Ophelia frowned. “Nosey. We don’t talk crap about you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

So-and-so with the pink hair said something in japanese. Even after months of conditioning, Horatio had been unable to make himself comfortable in the atmosphere of Ophelia’s bedroom. There was a bookshelf in the corner with three books on it and forty succulents. “I could care less about that,” he said, squinting to read the spine of the closest book;  _ Wicked Plants _ . It was green. He shook his head and continued. “Doesn’t he talk about the stuff that he’s worried about with you? Or am I wrong?”

“No, you’re totally right.”

“So, what is he worried about?”

Ophelia pushed another piece of popcorn against Horatio’s lips. She batted a finger at him, made a buzzing noise. “Illegal question. Can’t tell you,” she said.

“Does he ever talk about sex with you?” Horatio mumbled through the kernel--and he did get a piece that was mostly unpopped kernel.

“Dude, I just said I can’t tell you. Also, no. That’s on the list of stuff he won’t let me ask him about, along with Yorick, gender identity, long term goals and anything that took place in the summer before eighth grade--you know what, I just gave away too much. Forget I said any of that. Why do you want to know?”

Something in Ophelia’s tone was distinctly purposeful. She fell back into the tangle of sheets, trying to find room between Hamlet and a stuffed animal. When the former stirred, she reached for a lamp at the bedside, tapping it to turn it off. Horatio responded in the light of the anime ending credits, which she refused to skip. “I just want to know what’s bothering him.”

“A lot of things bother him,” Ophelia replied. “Have you met him?”

Horatio looked for the prince in the covers, finding only his hand and a portion of his hair. There were so many blankets that it was impossible to track the rise and fall of his chest. It was assumed to be steady. “Well, I feel like I should know what exactly all of the things are so I can fix them immediately, and he can be happy,” Horatio said, watching the opening credits for the fourth time that evening; Ophelia wouldn’t skip these either.

“Totally impossible.”

Horatio looked at her, finding his first good reason to resent her in a long time. “Being cynical about it won’t help any,” he said.

“Yeah, but neither will giving him a big hug and telling him everything will be okay, Horatio. I think he needs Prozac or something, but I think his mom would rather die than let anyone find out her son takes any kind of pill other than a multivitamin. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“There’s gotta be something,” Horatio argued, losing the popcorn bowl to her.

She threw a piece at him. “There’s not. Listen, you know about the story of Persephone, right?”

“Is that a question?”

Ophelia pursed her lips. “She’s my homegirl, and I figure you’ll get this if I put it in old-timey greek terms. So, in the story of Persephone, Hades falls in love with her and drags her down to hell, and eventually she gets used to him, and you know what she does?”

Horatio crossed his arms, unsure whether he preferred pleasantness to patronization. “She becomes queen of the underworld,” he said flatly.

“Does she try and drag Hades’ ass out of hell and into the daylight?”

“No.”

“No, she chills with him in hell. And they eat a lot of pomegranate or something,” Ophelia announced, placing her foot on Horatio’s back; where had the pleasantness even gone? “So, you just have to sit back and be satisfied with the underworld for a while, because Hades isn’t going to tell his dad he feels like garbage any time soon. He can barely tell Persephone, and that’s fine, because Persephone doesn’t talk about his problems either. That’s probably why Hades likes him so much.”

“I’m sorry, am I supposed to be Persephone in this analogy?”

Another foot. “Obviously.”

Hamlet stirred, and they finished another twenty-two minutes of anime in silence as he drifted back into the first bout of sleep he’d had in, apparently, three days. His arm snaked out from under the covers, searching for the fabric of Horatio’s shirt and pulling him down, instead, by the blanket around his shoulders, or moreso his willingness to lay back. They were arranged on the bed in a Hamlet-Horatio-Ophelia pattern, and only Ophelia was really watching the ongoing, subtitled developments of episode seven. She found his hand in the blankets and held it. “You  _ can  _ talk about your problems if you need to,” she whispered.

“I don’t.”

Having responded too quickly, Horatio felt the need to retract his hand and turn his back to her. He draped the arm over Hamlet and tried to think of a follow up. It was hard with the anime in the background and Ophelia gently leaning against him, pleasant again. While her eyes were on the TV, she drew soft circles in his back. It took too long, but he thought of words for the sake of having something to say, though their meaning was tissue soaked in ink. “I mean, I don’t need to.” Flimsy. “Besides, you just said it’s not like any third of the triumvirate can do anything about them.” Gossamer.

“Yeah, I guess I did. Sorry.”

Reaching around in the dark, Ophelia found the remote. She lowered the volume a final time, all the way down to zero. When they all lay absolutely still, saving the space the noise of the rustling sheets, Horatio could hear the music in Hamlet’s earbuds. He combed his fingers through the prince’s hair and picked phrases out of a song from  _ Chicago.  _ “Have you ever read  _ The Lord of the Flies _ ?” he said absently.

“Yes,” Ophelia whispered.

“Do you know what it’s about, then?”

“A bunch of kids who get stranded on an island and kill each other,” she whispered.

“No, like the underlying message.”

“Okay, douchebag. Mankind is inherently evil, or something.”

Horatio nodded, even if it was too dark for her to see it. If her eyes were already closed. “In the summer of eighth grade, Marcellus took Antsy and Gil and Hamlet and I out into the cornfield late at night to scare us, and we all ended up splitting up. And this was after I had just re-read it, and I ran into Hamlet in the field. I was kind of freaking out because there are supposed to be demons out there, and he made me talk about something to distract myself, I guess, and I asked him if he thought that was true--if there was any point in doing good things if that was true, I think. And he said there wasn’t. But then he led me back to the house, and he made sure I could keep up because my knees were all fucked up from tripping, and when we got inside, he helped me wash them off and put bandaids on them before Marcellus got back and made fun of me. Even if there was absolutely no point. I think...I think I can try to help him even if there’s no point, too. Because back then, I told him I admired even making an effort. I’m going to make an effort.”

Hearing that distinct sound of exhalation through the nose took the place of Horatio actually seeing Ophelia smile. She stretched an arm around him and did her best the slide his glasses off. “Do your best, Persephone,” she hummed, folding his frames and discarding them on the bedside table.

“If I’m Persephone and Hamlet is Hades, who are you…?”

“Horatio, go to sleep.”

It was apparent that that nature of conversation was best humored between him and Hamlet alone. Though his eyelids were heavy, Horatio remained awake, resting his forehead on the prince’s and listening in to his music. He’d been combing the other’s hair for a while, relaxing in the fact that it was still just as soft, when he noticed the faint hints rhythm cut out.  The phone had died, and lost somewhere in the bedding, it left them with nothing.

In a half an hour, Hamlet stirred again, this time sliding off of the bed and out of the room. In a half an hour, despite being subtly groggy, Horatio untangled himself from Ophelia and her bedding to pursue him. He took the long way out to the pool, down the hallway and through the living room, without turning any lights on. With quivering hands, he shoved the door open, and stumbling barefoot out onto the tile, his knees buckled at the pool’s edge, where he dunked his head beneath the water. For a worrying length of time, he held the position, resurfacing only as Horatio’s hands landed on his shoulders to yank him backward. He then came up gasping and sputtering, drenched from the chin up and reaching to steady himself on the other as he got a fit of coughing out of the way. They sat steeped in the blue light as he quieted, patting his face dry with the bottom of his shirt. Horatio spoke first. “Sorry, what the hell are you doing?” He pulled his own shirt off and offered it up as a towel.

“Nothing. I thought you were asleep.”

When he would accept it, Horatio took the liberty of drying the prince’s hair himself. “Not nothing. And I can't sleep after Ophelia makes me watch weird anime. Are you okay?”

“Fine. Just had a weird dream. I was hoping I would feel less nauseous if I was fully awake. I don't. Actually,” Hamlet trailed off, squirming away from the other and getting to his feet in a wobbly push off the ground.

After rounding the poolside, he cracked a door to the yard open, letting in a rush of cold air as he padded, still barefoot, down the steps. Without his glasses, to Horatio he had become a pale shape on the other side of the wall of glass dividing them from the elements, and while he certainly couldn't see it, Horatio heard the subsequent retch of the prince surrendering whatever he had in his stomach to the earth. He came back inside with the shirt pressed to his mouth, legs giving out the moment he reached a place Horatio could once again see him clearly. Shivering, he reached out for the other, and in already having the shirt in his possession, he settled for wrapping his fingers in the fabric of Horatio’s pants. “I heard you talking to Ophelia,” he breathed. “Between tracks. The summer of eighth grade...that’s an illegal topic.”

With a hand outstretched, Horatio ran his fingers through the prince’s hair. “Can I ask why?” he whispered.

Hamlet shook his head. “Stop. You don’t have to make an effort.”

“I’m kind of worried about you.”

“Stop. Don’t.”

“But--”

Falling backward, Hamlet pulled Horatio suddenly into the pool, giving him a mouthful of water in place of a chance to process the motion. He struggled to come up to the surface, wading as gracefully as he could manage with the prince’s arms wrapped around his shoulders and water painfully in his eyes. In such a state, he treaded too far from the edge to find anything to grab onto, the situation reminiscent of how he’d learn to swim in the first place; yet, as a child, he was distinctly aware of the audience who rooted for him with partial investment by the pool’s edge. Here, he struggled with only Hamlet as company--Hamlet, who was currently hanging off of him and muttering a half-hearted apology into his chattering jaw line. The pool was supposedly heated, but it was still December, and as of late, especially, the prince seemed to have the bodily composition of an ice sculpture. “Illegal topics are illegal because there’s not point in talking about them anyway,” he said, and not even his lips were warm. His voice echoed in the space, mixed in with the hum of the filter and the slosh of the water churning around them as they bobbed at the pool’s center. “They just make me feel like...like complete shit. But once we get to Wittenburg next year, I can forget about them.”

“Sex, gender identity, long term goals, the summer before eighth grade and...Yorick.”

Hamlet averted his gaze as best he could while still clinging to the other. “Yeah. I’m going to forget all about them, and it’ll all be fine. Like what you do.”

“What I do?” Horatio asked, forgetting, for a moment, to kick and thus allowing his head to dip painful back underwater. “What do I do?”

“You know. You never talk about anything. You never talk about Yorick. And it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.”

Responding too quickly, again. A three-word statement that was unretractable. Hamlet wouldn’t let him swim away, and neither of them could think of a suitable follow-up. “Oh,” Hamlet mumbled.

“Yeah. It...it’s not fine.” Horatio’s head dipped under again, and when he came back up, the words spilled out with the water. “It’s not fine. It’s not fine. Sometimes, I just suddenly remember him and get sad about it. Like...like stuff we used to talk about. I think about how I didn’t even visit him after the first month or so. I can’t even remember the last conversation we had because it was almost a year ago. I figured he’d just get better, or--or--shit. Shit.”

As Horatio’s breath caught in his throat and he forgot how to tread, Hamlet held him up. He kicked until they came to the edge, and he did what he considered a learned behavior, pushing Horatio’s bangs out of his face and running a hand through his hair until he was calm. Instead of comforting words, Hamlet was unsure what he was allowing, but it happened, and he couldn’t stop it. “Do you ever, um...wish you could have had better conversations with him?” he said.

To see Horatio nod was a surprising relief. Almost as if it would be worth it to take the risk and try and relate to him further. Hamlet pushed his hair back and, looking into his face, thought he might understand.

“I keep having dreams about him, where I’m not sure I’m dreaming. I don’t remember falling asleep or even waking up afterward, but I hear him knocking on my door or calling me. And for a while, I’m convinced I’ve got to go somewhere, and I’ll find him, but then I remember. But if I don’t get up and look for him, I’ll look like an asshole who doesn’t care. So, I always have to. You don’t...uh, you don’t ever have dreams like that?”

He didn’t. It was obvious from his face, and both of them were aware of it. There was no use in lying. “No. Do you get those a lot?”

Hamlet sunk low in the water, letting it rise around his lips. He nodded.

“Have you told your dad or anybody?”

Lower, letting the water up over his nose for as long as he could hold his breath. He shook his head and swam back to the center. “It won't matter anymore when we get to Wittenburg. Nothing’ll matter anymore, and it'll be good. We’ll be good, right?”

The sound, more than any of the others, echoed. “Right.” And Horatio hated the echo, but. “But I think you should tell your dad, if it's bothering you. He might understand.”

Hamlet splashed at him, one large motion with one wide sweep of the arm. “Shut up. You think I put up with all this bullshit just to announce that I'm still all fucked up anyway?” He forced himself to laugh. “Shut up.”

“Sorry.”

“No, just shut up. Have you ever noticed how loud it is in here?”

They floated, and Hamlet looked in a direction that didn’t matter, trying to pinpoint whichever noise was the worst. He didn’t appear any more awake than when he was dry. “I love you,” he said, unwilling to let any kind of silence to properly set in, even on his own demand.

Horatio pushed off of the pool’s edge. “I love you, too,” he said, kicking his way to the prince.

“It’s just really loud in here,” the prince mumbled, leaning into the other. “My phone died. Sing something.”

“Uh.”

Hamlet laughed again, though now it was something genuine. Maybe even warm. But his lips were still cold; he drew a line of kisses along Horatio’s jaw. “I’m kidding. It died right in the middle of Dodie. ‘Intertwined’.” 

He began to hum, tapping a beat on Horatio’s collarbone as they drifted to the edge again.

“I’m trying to figure it out on uke--I’m trying to figure a lot of stuff out on uke. I was going to sing you something else, but that’s...that’s stupid and embarrassing.”

Horatio held back a smile that would only provoke. “It’s not stupid. I’d like it.”

“It’s stupid. When we get to Wittenburg.”

“I’ve got a lot to look forward to at Wittenburg.”

Having never heard the tune before, Horatio failed to hum along, and he bit his cheek to keep the smile at bay, as it was growing more difficult in the passing minutes. They swayed in the water as if they were anything close to properly dancing besides being close to one another. It was cold, the sky was a single tone of black out the window, their clothes dragged them down, Hamlet changed tunes when he grew bored or forgot the previous one, and they traded the word ‘Wittenburg’ back and forth until it became a joke. Horatio was going to Wittenburg. Hamlet was going to Wittenburg. Studying the classics at Wittenburg. Being the richest kid at Wittenburg. Being unable to afford Wittenburg. Being--

“It’s fine,” Horatio said suddenly, yanked away from whatever world they had stumbled into, where even though it was December and they were in the pool, they were together, and they were warm. 

Hamlet had quit humming, having run headfirst into one of Horatio’s own illegal topics. The car accident, his parents, conversion camp and.

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

They wouldn’t. They floated. It was fine.


	13. Maladies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions.
> 
> And may all of your Christmases be merry...and so on and so forth.

Snow hit in a single, thick blanket, and afterward, continued to fall in excessive amounts on a nightly basis. It crashed toward the earth in the view outside of the living room window, desecrating whatever plow work the Kings had paid to have done the day before. In seeing the undoing, Gertrude clicked her tongue, sipping steadily at her third drink of the evening. She picked at a tray of snacks she had made a show of unveiling--various hors d'oeuvres and the simple commodities of every type of cheese and cracker that could be procured reasonably within the county. While there was enough to service everyone currently within the confines of the estate, it was more for show. Even if Horatio had any sort of appetite, he would have been afraid to disturb the arrangement, or go anywhere near the kitchen counter for that matter, for fear Gertrude would target him for the purposes of conversation. Yet, as it stood, the living room offered him little of an alternative safe haven. 

The kitchen had been surrendered to the adults, namely Hamlet’s mother and uncle, and Ophelia’s father, all commenting blandly to one another on the state of the weather from time to time, but the living room was a different case entirely. Spread across the two couches, two armchairs and a place on the floor were the youths, Horatio sitting at the very edge of them with a persistent sniff and an afghan around his shoulders. He had a headache playing menacingly at his temples, as he shared the couch with Laertes, who insisted on speaking at the highest volume no matter how close his conversation partner. The other couch was completely occupied by Ophelia, and if anyone moved to accompany her, Laertes would find it in himself to raise both his voice and his visual presence to something unnecessarily threatening. On the floor, Marcellus made a game of trying to remove Horatio’s socks when he wasn’t paying enough attention. There wasn’t a moment of peace until the commercial breaks on the TV ended, and the whole space returned its collective attention to the local coverage of new year’s eve celebration. 

The camera fell on him, and Hamlet smiled, looking the best he had in months. 

“Oh my God, is he wearing makeup?” Marcellus scoffed from the floor, cracker between his teeth.

“It’s TV makeup. They don’t let people on TV without it,” Laertes replied, cheese between his. “Don’t wanna disappoint them girls online that like him so much. Betcha ten dollars he’s got at least one bobby pin in.”

“I don’t think you need bobby pins if you’re going to spray it all in place. I think they just sprayed it so it’d sit like that. No pins, and it sparkles when he turns his head the right way, look,” Marcellus countered, index finger outstretched the moment Hamlet dared make a move.

Laughter erupted from the two of them. Horatio rested his forehead in his hand. Though the break over the holidays was, for all intents and purposes, meant to be relaxing, he'd expected it to go a lot differently than it had. For a time, he'd wistfully painted his thoughts with bastardizations of Hallmark channel movies featuring himself and the version of the prince that existed only in his imagination. Marginally less awkward, maybe an inch taller, always prepared with an outrageous romantic gesture. Only a day into winter break, that would become an imagination exclusive, as a competition arose in which Horatio was always the loser.

Indeed, a day into winter break, Hamlet was given the choice to spend his leisure at home or to spend it travelling with his father. In the competition between Hamlet’s father and anyone, Hamlet’s father won without fail, and they departed immediately. Late night text messages were all that would follow, stopping in the few days before where Horatio currently sat. It was far from the worst holiday he'd ever had, but it was nearing the top of the list, especially when Marcellus announced his return for the break and further explained that Horatio was the closest thing he had back home to familiar company.

The Hamlet on the TV continued to smile, now engrossed in a discussion of the top ten something-or-another’s from the past year. He argued shallowly about the placement of number six versus number five.

Laertes spoke up again. “Number five is number five for a reason--I think it makes sense, so why’s he gotta nitpick?”

“He doesn’t,” Marcellus replied. “See, he's just making conversation. I bet he doesn't even know what the difference between number five and number six is. He's kind of a sociopath. Were you around that time when he--”

Horatio looked away from the screen, holding back a potential argument. In noticing the same silence from the kitchen, his eyes fell there, and he saw an hors d’oeuvre plate unattended. Ophelia's father lingered alone, dipping into the family supply of hot cocoa for a refill in his mug of frankly ridiculous size, surveying all of them as if he was savoring the extension of his parental authority. Having lost his socks to Marcellus’ game, Horatio pulled his feet up under the afghan and checked the TV again. One final commercial break before the countdown to the new year. He slid off of the couch, muttering something about the bathroom before stepping away to the shadows of the hallway. Slipping into the bathroom to stand there, he stared at himself in the mirror, sniffed and found his phone in his pocket. 

 

**You’re on TV right now but Happy New Year.** , sent 11:55 PM

 

Blowing his nose into a stack of toilet paper, Horatio waited a moment before he continued typing, considering each letter as it made its way on screen. After staring at it a second too long, he deleted them. In the mirror, in the opulent mood lighting of the King family estate, he saw the shadows in his face and was glad the sight was his alone, as it was dreadful. The phone buzzed.

 

**_Comm. break. Live broadcast. Excited to see you next year._ ** **_Love you._ ** **,** sent 11:56 PM

**_Very mad I can’t midnight-kiss you._ ** , sent 11:56 PM

**_Kiss O. and pretend it’s me._ ** , sent 11:56 PM

 

**I’m not going to do that.** , sent 11:57 PM

**Laertes would kill me.** , sent 11:57 PM

 

**_He can’t kill it’s against the 10 commandments._ ** , sent 11:57 PM

**_Don’t reply. Break ending. ///Hate/// TV._ ** , sent 11:58 PM **_  
_ **

**I love you** , sent 11:58 PM

 

Somewhere between sentiments, Horatio had turned the sink on. He splashed water on his face as an afterthought, shoving his phone in his pocket and lamenting the last eight letters. Rather, he lamented sending them after clearly reading the order to not reply. He lamented having to send them and not being able to say them in person, in situation in which he found himself holding a grudge against Hamlet’s father. More water on his face. No, that was weird, especially when Horatio’s immediate mental image of the King involved a plaid shirt and a dad joke. In fact, if he hadn’t been told so, he wouldn’t believe the relation in the first place. Though he would never say so, Horatio consider Hamlet much closer in looks, temperament and personality to his mother. In drinking habits, even. 

Doing his best to leave that thought behind, Horatio returned to the length of the hall. He heard counting out in the living room, and he walked away from it, hands in his pockets. It’d be different at Wittenburg, he thought. That had become the shared mantra of him and the prince in any case; Wittenburg was becoming less a university and more some personal shangri la, and the two of them recognized it, but opted to say nothing on the matter. If it was shangri la, it was shangri la.

In the midst of the shouting from the living room, Horatio’s eyes dragged back and forth across the floor, where he saw in the dark, against the back wall, his sock. He checked the time on his phone as if it was any other night except this one, where it was clearing midnight, and ventured further from one noise, toward another, reaching down with a thin few fingers to retrieve what was his. Not meaning to, he heard the clinking of glasses, and by 12:01, he hovered outside the door to the master bedroom, a side of the house he rarely frequented. There was even less light there, save for the efforts of a lamp by the bedside. He glanced through the space left away from the frame for no particular reason, finding something by the light of the lamp alone that he wasn’t really looking for. Backing away quietly, he checked his phone again and returned to the living room. It was 12:04 now. Horatio had been standing and watching what he wasn’t supposed to for far longer than he was supposed to. After another minute passed, he was taken away from his thoughts by Ophelia shoving her phone in his face. Robotically, he took it and held it up to his ear.

“Hey, happy New Year.”

“Oh. Yeah, happy New Year.”

“Ophelia said you missed the countdown. You didn’t kiss her and pretend it was me.”

“I told you I wasn’t going to do that.”

Hamlet’s familiar, exasperated huff came through the other end of the phone. “I told her to kiss you and pretend it was me, and she said the same thing. You sound gross, though. Are you sick?”

“Yeah.”

“I think there’s a bunch of cold and flu stuff in my night stand if you need it. Don’t try to go home tonight either, I was talking to the local weather guy a second ago, and he said the snow’s not stopping anytime soon. Father just phoned to tell Mother we’re going to be back a day late.”

‘ _ About your mom, actually--’ _ No, there was no way he could say that. Horatio sniffed again, finding it harder and harder to keep his sinuses in check. “Why do you have medicine in your night stand?”

“What? Shut up. I just do. What if someone tampered with it? Have you ever even read about the Chicago Tylenol murders?”

“Like the ones in the 80s?”

“Shut up. Just take some medicine and go to bed. Sleep in my bed. Even if Mother sets you up in the guest bedroom, you should go downstairs and sleep in my bed. It’s more comfortable than the guest beds, and...um. It’d be good if it smelled like you, a little bit, when I get back. I’m hanging up now. Kiss Ophelia and pretend it’s me.”

The phone clicked before Horatio could get another word in, and even if the prince hadn’t been so abrupt, the sinuses were at it again, not to be easily contained with the kind of sniff inward that caused a deeper and more painful headache. Reaching around, he realized the only thing the house seemed to lack were frequent and well-placed tissues. He had to accept one from Ophelia, one which she unfolded from a flowery packet produced from her pocket in exchange for her phone. Under the watchful eyes of her father, she then volunteered to show him where they kept the real tissues. He declined. “I need to get home before Bill forgets it’s New Years and gets mad,” he said. She volunteered to walk him down the driveway. “It’s too cold, forget it,” he said. She already had her parka at the ready. “Marcellus has my other sock.” She made Marcellus produce the second sock, looming over him as if she wasn’t the pastel-colored miniature of a regular person.

By the time they got out onto the porch, the two-thirds of the triumvirate looked at one another and let the wind bite at them; it stole away their will to take any step further. Ophelia pressed the rest of her flowery tissues into Horatio’s hands. “Happy New Year,” she said.

“Happy New Year,” he echoed, sniffing.

Her hands, wrapped in the yarn of a stylish Christmas present from Gertrude, curled around Horatio’s fingers, rigid and pale. She squeezed. “This is the year you guys go to college and leave me behind,” she whispered. “It’s not fair.”

“We’ll still have crappy holidays like these,” Horatio replied. 

Ophelia smiled. “Where his dad steals him from us, right?”

“Right.”

She laughed, and Horatio lost some of the sound to the snow, drifting just outside of the protection of the porch awning. It piled up into a solid sea, combining the stretches of dead cornstalk with the road. The plow wouldn’t come until hours into the morning. Horatio leaned in so as to not lose anymore. “He told me to kiss you and pretend you’re him,” she said.

“Same. Which is weird, right?”

“Right.”

But she was on her toes, and with her arms wrapped around his neck to pull him down to her level, she kissed him. And he leaned in to kiss her back, lost somewhere between picturing Hamlet through the stars he got from shutting his eyes suddenly and genuinely welcoming the sensation of her thick layer of lipgloss. Sinuses. He pulled away to sniff. “We shouldn’t do this, I’m very sick.”

“If I’m pretend you’re Hamlet, you’re not. Here, look...”

Ophelia reached beneath her parka, and for a second, Horatio readied himself to take a step backwards, watching the zipper move downward to release a part of her chest. However, she quickly found her phone beneath the outer layer before zipping it back up, alongside a tangle of earbuds that she struggled to handle carefully with mittens on. In fact, one of them came off, and as she held it between her teeth, she straightened the mess of cords, finally plugging the jack in and pushing a bud into Horatio’s ear. The song choice alone dissolved the illusion, but he chose to ignore it. He tried to ignore it. “This is super Hamlet, right?” Ophelia whispered.

Despite confirming his suspicions with a glance at her phone screen, Horatio nodded. “Right,” he said, smiling as she began to hum; that was Hamlet, ever so slightly. That would do, it was enough to let words slip out on a whim. “About your mother...”

Ophelia looked up, in reality motherless. Her brows furrowed and immediately, Horatio hurried to catch himself. 

“I meant, about Hamlet’s mother,” he said. That wasn’t any better. “It’s not important.”

With one harsh tap, Ophelia paused the music. “Dude, what? What about her?” She wasn’t any iteration of Hamlet at all.

“Nothing. Or. I guess. I don’t know. Is she having an affair, do you know?”

“Holy shit, why would I know? She’s having an affair?”

Horatio brought a finger to his lips, wary of the figures moving beyond the foggy glass and Christmas lights that separated them from the harshness of the outdoors. If Gertrude was in there, he didn’t see her outline. Still, he lowered his voice. “I kind of...saw her with Hamlet’s uncle? I don’t know. I’m probably wrong.”

“Oh my God, you didn’t tell him, did you?”

“No. God, no.”

Ophelia pushed a lot of breath out into the air where it was visible for only a moment before dissipating. In the creases in her forehead and the depths of her eyes she showed the most thought, and her lips gradually pursed as she chose her words. “Well, don’t tell him. It’s probably fine,” she said.

“And I could have just been totally wrong,” Horatio insisted. “It’ll probably turn out to be nothing, right?”

“...Right.” 

They stood a foot away from one another, and the snow continued to fall. Denmark was quiet until Horatio sniffed again. 

“I’m really sorry if I get you sick,” he said.

“We’re pretending, remember? You’re getting Hamlet sick, so it’s fine.”

Though he stood on the porch for a good twenty minutes with the intention of leaving, after blowing his nose another time, Horatio followed Ophelia back inside. He received a third blanket from her, for his shoulders, and retired in Hamlet’s bed. In the nightstand, he found a variety of medications, some contradictory. Taking one more Tylenol than he should have, he felt asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a short one, sorry about that.


	14. Cassius and Brutus and Potato and Leek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions.
> 
> And to exit hell, one can only travel deeper, even in the midwest.

While he was in the majority of students who had only heard about it, Horatio couldn’t squeeze his way into the small crowd of people that had actually seen Hamlet’s father entering the building, nor would he see the man leave with his namesake in tow. The only thing he had seen, only an hour or so before, was the younger Hamlet taking a glorious tumble down a flight of stairs despite insisting he was fine. Three or four girls leaped into action, all saying they knew the best way to the nurse’s office before a teacher intervened. This was, of course, before Horatio saw Hamlet falling asleep at his desk a minute into class and passing off a surgical mask as the simplest of precautions, because, he said, contrary to the evidence, he was nearly over his cold. Unfortunate as it was, falling down the stairs was the necessary segway to getting the King to show up and take his son to the Urgent Care.

Ophelia called by lunch to say it was definitely mono, and Hamlet was definitely not nearly over it at all. Somehow, the rest of the school would hear about it, and by the time Horatio made the journey to the estate as he so often did, he had the job of delivering gifts of varying sincerity from classmates whose names he didn’t remember. Beyond the flowers, cards and chocolates, he struggled to open the door, but no one would answer it for him. Ophelia would only discover and greet him after the fact, as he dumped everything on the kitchen counter. She shushed him, taking some sympathy chocolate for herself before leading him back to Hamlet’s bedroom. “Gertrude’s out getting some expensive soup from this one place, but when she gets back, she’s going to be pretty anal about ‘letting Lettie rest’, so use your time wisely,” she said, leaving a kiss on Horatio’s cheek and a knock on the door.

Upon slipping inside, Horatio crept to Hamlet’s bedside, though all he was disturbing was the prince under the covers browsing Netflix through partial consciousness. He was slow to react, and when he did, his voice was sandpaper. Really, Horatio regretted asking how he was feeling. “Fantastic,” he said, unable to achieve anything louder than a raspy whisper. “I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner.”

And though he sounded worse than he ever had, he was serious. When Horatio made a move to apologize, Hamlet held a hand up to stop him. His cheeks were flushed, and he had to reach around to find a cough drop before speaking again. It was cherry, held between his teeth as he dug around for the TV remote.

“First of all, everyone thinks I got mono from Ophelia, meaning they think I make out with her often enough to get a sick from it, when in reality--”

“Sorry.”

Again Hamlet prevented Horatio from speaking. He gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder, a gentle kiss on the cheek. Then, wrapped his arms around Horatio’s neck, he pulled him into bed with all the strength of a subtle breeze, dizzying himself by the time the other hit the pillow. “Yeah, in reality you totally gave me mono,” he croaked, juggling the cough drop from one cheek to another, “But again, it’s great, I’m having a fantastic time. Also it means I can’t give it back to you, so please lie down with me and choose a good show. I already binged everything I like.”

Horatio took hold of the remote, now stuck in an awkward position with Hamlet’s head on his chest. As he scrolled through comedies, workplace comedies, and God, why were there so many different categories for comedy, he felt the prince’s warmth against him, though he couldn’t enjoy it knowing it stemmed from a fever. Still, everything he was experiencing was exclusive to him, as he was likely patient zero in this case, which was a feeling of satisfaction he would ride for as long as he could before it was overtaken by guilt. The last third of the triumvirate wasn’t getting a string of jaw kisses right now, or eventually tasting the cherry cough drop and the different sort of heat associated with Hamlet’s tongue pushing past closed lips. On some level, unpalatable, and on another, pitiful, as Hamlet quickly pushed himself into fatigue and had to cease. Tired of scrolling, Horatio found a movie under the Girls’ Night In category. He expected a critique of the choice, receiving none. 

The movie began. Hamlet watched through a half-lidded gaze, and Horatio watched Hamlet. He seemed to start speaking again to stay awake. “You know what’s...um...what’s also good is…since I’m sick, Mother’s being nice to me. It’s like when I was younger...like, um, Father’s here a lot...and we got to talk about books and things, like we used to, and Mother came to pet my hair, and she’s buying the soup I like because Yorick’s not around to...uh. He can’t make it.” 

“What kind of soup?” Horatio asked, a churning beginning in his stomach at the mention of the au pair. 

“Potato and leek.”

“That's good.”

“It’s perfect.”

The film was quickly deteriorating into a series of bitter associations, scenes upon scenes of relatable behaviors of those confined to memory, and with it, Horatio’s stomach continued to bother him. Like  _ Alien _ at the laundromat, but a fraction less gruesome, he thought, and though he willed conversation onward, Hamlet had already spoken himself into unconsciousness, or rather, a place where he periodically had to force himself to stay awake and even semi-attentive. A large part of him became devoted to the occasional and repeated question, directed at the television, “Wait, what's happening now…?”

Horatio answered each time, to the best ability, in ten syllables or less. Within such a parameter, he received a gentle nodded, maybe a hum of acknowledgement. And as perverse as it was, he was enjoying himself, right up until there was a knock on the door which lasted long enough for the sound to be recognized, but not long enough for it to be reacted to. By the time Horatio could seriously consider his position incriminating, the prince’s father was already asserting his parental authority by coming in anyway, though no one had responded to him. Why would he wait for a response, his son was resting? He was resting right there, on top of Horatio. They were watching something from the Girls’ Night In category. As the King stepped into the room and deposited a paper bag on the dresser, Horatio distinctly felt the true imminence of hell. Indeed, the icy pit of the final circle, where Hamlet’s arms were Satan’s teeth. If he squinted, Horatio might have seen Dante, or that might have been his own expression of horror and withdrawal when the movie grew darker to allow it. 

What else was there but to laugh? Horatio forced himself to laugh. “He, uh. I mean. I tried telling him I'm not Ophelia, but. Uh.”

Hamlet’s father twisted a stray piece of his beard between his fingers. When he made eye contact, it seemed just as unpleasant for him as it was for his target audience. Such was its purpose, to convey some menial level of empathy. “Now, I don't know much about the homosexual lifestyle, but--”

“I'm not gay. Sir.”

“Really? But Hamlet said--”

“I’m just trying to focus on my grades right now, and--wait. What did Hamlet say.”

The King dug his hand into the bag and came back up with a cup of soup and a plastic spoon. He offered it, only for Horatio to stiffly shake his head, to which the King shrugged and helped himself. “He said you were, uh--which is fine. That’s none’a my business, it’s all fine. It’s your privacy and all.”

If the smell that wafted from the soup the moment the King popped the lid was supposed to be potato and leek, it was decidedly the most nauseating iteration of soup Horatio had ever experienced. Surely, the whole scenario would have been worse if it was the other half of the prince’s parentage, but that wasn’t something Horatio was currently able to picture, especially not as the King continued onward through spoonfuls.

“If you ever need to, uh, talk--”

“I don’t.”

“Again, it’s fine.”

“I know. Yeah.”

“Well,” the King spilt a bit of soup in his beard, and Horatio wanted to die, “Suppose you better wriggle your way outta there before he wakes up and figures out you aren’t Ophelia.” He laughed. Was he-- “We’re trying to keep him from getting too upset while he’s sick, it uses up too much energy.”

“Why would he get upset.”

“On account’a how you’re clearly not Ophelia.”

Was he being genuine? Horatio squinted. “Why would he be mad that I’m not Ophelia…?”

“Well, you know, it’s like...if you swung that way, wouldn’t you be shocked to find that the young lady you’ve been cuddling isn’t actually a young lady? Or is that hard for you to sort of--”

“Oh. No, I get it.”

“You also might wanna be careful not to catch mono from him yourself. Read online that it’s real contagious. People might get the wrong idea.”

He was being genuine. He was dipping his little plastic spoon into the pungent waters of his soup and overfilling it, sipping as much off of the top as he could manage before spilling it again. Then, he was searching the depths of the bag for a second cup, flashing it before the deadness in Horatio’s eyes and going on: “Trudy’s gonna be mad, but I beat her to the soup place. Tell Hamlet this soup’s all his when he wakes up, and he’s gotta eat it before she finds out and maims me.” Then, he made some joke about marriage that only a straight person could make and left, and Horatio realized not only the weight and shape of the circumstances, but the plain fact that Hamlet’s father was fucking idiot. His eyes bore into the door as it closed.

Everything afterward was left thoroughly sour, as the movie cycled on and Hamlet abandoned his commitment to slumber. His eyes came open in the long span of a rotten twenty minutes, and though groggy, he pressed a kiss to Horatio’s unwelcoming jawline. The action was decidedly too much, and mixed with the smell of potato and leek, Horatio felt his face grow hot in the least comfortable iteration of the action. His throat was raw before he began speaking. “Did you out me?”

Hamlet paused. The movie paused. It wasn’t clear who had done it. He searched for another cough drop, and unable to find it, he answered in little more than a whisper. “What are you talking about?”

Horatio squeezed one hand with the other so hard he might break his own fingers. His last utterance turned over and repeated in his head until it pushed him straight into the depths of an unwanted panic. He was suddenly trying very hard not to hyperventilate, but as trying very hard and hyperventilating went hand in hand, he was having little success. “Your dad said you did. Hamlet. You can’t just do that. Why would you do that.”

What was Hamlet looking for again? Cough drops? He couldn’t find them, and forgot the pursuit the moment he was awake enough to understand and empathize with panic. No, not empathize. Absorb, maybe, as a towel absorbs moisture. It crept into him all too soon after what should have remained a peaceful nap. The only proper response was indignance, because he had no good control over how he externalized his emotions. “I didn’t out you,” he said suddenly, defensive and somewhat dizzy. “He asked. In the car. A while ago. He said, ‘Hey, Horatio’s gay, isn’t he?’ To which I said, ‘Yeah, I guess.’”

“That fucking counts!”

The prince shrunk back at the breech in Horatio’s typical avoidance of explicative, matched with his sudden volume. To the best of his ability, Hamlet responded in kind, stern beyond the preface of a few hacking coughs. “It doesn’t.”

Of the two of them, one in need of another cough drop and one not, the latter had the greater difficulty speaking. “It does fucking count!” he shouted. “It fucking--What if he tells somebody? If he fucking mentions it or something, or--”

“He’s not going to.”

But he was a fucking idiot. Horatio couldn’t say that outloud, but he was. He buried his head in his hands, in search of more breathable air down by his knees, of which there wasn’t enough. His fingers traveled over his ears, into his hair, tangling up and letting go in a cycle meant to accomplish nothing. He felt a spot of heat on his spine as Hamlet reached for his back. “You didn’t tell him we were together or anything,” Horatio managed, meaning it as a question but having too flat a tone to establish it as such.

Hamlet gave the expected response. “No.”

“You didn’t even come out. You didn’t tell him you were gay.”

“I’m not.”

“What.”

“I’m not gay. I’ve got Ophelia, too, technically, so--”

Horatio lifted his head. Further heat in his cheeks came of its own dreadful accord. “Are you fucking kidding me? So, technically you’re bi or something, same fucking difference!”

The prince’s face twisted in an unfamiliar form of distress. He withdrew his hand. “I don’t know. Horatio.” He swallowed hard, and it pained him.

“You can’t just out people and stay in the closet and pretend everything’s fine, that’s not--”

“What did you fucking expect?” For a moment, in raising his voice, Hamlet broke into another fit, hacking over several attempts to continue his thoughts. By the time he was able to manage, his tone was little more than a shredded mess. “Did you think we were going to make it official and run away together and get married? That's not--” More coughing. Horatio’s eyes watered. “--That’s not how it works.”

A fraction of a mortifying silence followed. Neither of them had spoken of the eventual and destined change of the state of their affairs beyond university, which mattered little in the grand scheme. Horatio was caught between insisting bitterly that he was already aware and arguing in the case of optimism when Hamlet cleared his throat and robbed him of the opportunity.

“We’re going to go to Wittenberg, and it’s going to be a glorious few years, and I’m going to study political science and agricultural business, and I’m going to come right fucking back here and do exactly what Father’s been doing since before I was born, and he’s going to become a senator or something, and then maybe I’ll become a senator, and I’ll marry Ophelia for face value and have a child to name after myself. That’s how it works, and if it went any other way, everyone would know, and they would know I was the one that fucked it up by not being good enough or doing something stupid or--”

“Or doing something you actually wanted to.” All the softness had left him, and now Horatio spoke with disdain.

His was met with an echo of it. This prince had mastered disdained as a tool, even when he was almost completely exhausted. “We return to this every time, and I don’t know what I have to do to make you understand that what I want doesn’t matter.”

“You think it doesn’t, but it does!” Horatio insisted, feeling as if this added amount of anger would drive the point home any better than the many other times they had argued.

To his surprise, Hamlet’s face, already flush from sickness, was winding into the inimitable contour of someone trying very hard not to burst into tears. He shouted until his voice broke. “If I went ahead and did what I fucking wanted, I wouldn’t fucking be here! We’d go to Wittenberg and have a glorious few years, and then I’d fucking kill myself!”

And after it broke, Horatio sat in silence and watched his jaw chatter. He numbly considered dismissing the other, partially entertained the idea of reaching out and wrapping his arms around the problem until it melted away into only heat and flesh, but found himself unable to move. It dawned on him that he was afraid, and he would have liked to commit the cause to some abstraction, but it was already clear: Hamlet had scared him. Red-faced, putting everything into just one more painful push to keep his cries down in his throat, and even in his illness, for all intents and purposes, scary.

From there, Horatio had found himself in a dark wood, the right road lost. He apologized quietly, waiting afterward as if there was any hope he had a Virgil of his own to intercept. Yet, no ghost in any form was coming to intercept him. He would have to stand on his own, grabbing the cup of soup off of the dresser to leave by the bed, where the prince might be able to reach without straining himself. The smell made him gag, though it was only another layer to an assortment of distress. “Your dad said you should eat this before your mom gets home,” he said.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t tell anybody,” Hamlet whispered; he could only whisper now.

“It’s fine.” 

It wasn’t, as always. Horatio slipped off his cardigan, and leaning in only briefly, he draped it around the prince’s shoulders.There were blankets and a thermostat that could always be turned a notch higher, and in remembering, Horatio was unsure why he had done anything, especially when no satisfaction came of it. Among the sheets, he found the remote, the cough drops and Hamlet’s phone, earbuds ever connected to it. He passed them over in a pile. 


	15. Purgatorio e Paradiso

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions.
> 
> And it is nearly impossible to leave Denmark behind.

**_hey you should come over soon we need to rewatch_ ** **_  
_ ** **_kiki’s delivery service ೭੧(❛▿❛✿)੭೨_ ** , sent 2/3/16 12:38 PM

**_do you wanna come get ur sweater or should i_ ** **_  
_ ** **_bring it to you? i found it on the couch._ ** , sent 2/14/16 1:43 PM

**_i’ll have hamlet bring it with him tomorrow maybe??_ ** **_  
_ ** **_σ(´し_｀〃)ゞ_ ** , sent 2/14/16 5:01 PM

**_pls help me have u ever read Catcher in the Rye im_ ** **_  
_ ** **_dying_ ** , sent 4/23/16 2:22 PM

**_hey come over_ ** , sent 6/30/16 11:00 AM

**_(꒪⌓꒪)_ ** , sent 7/1/16 2:30 AM

**_saw this meme and thought of u_ ** _ ( _ _ see attachment _ _ ) _ ,    
sent 8/11/16 8:25 PM

**_come over and see me before you leave!!!_ ** **_  
_ ** **_College Man!!_ ** , sent Friday 10:07 AM

**_♡♡♡♡♡♡ (＊ρω-*) ♡♡♡♡♡♡_** , sent Yesterday 11:54 AM

 

Having arrived late both on purpose and on the trusted leisure of the foster parent happy to be rid of  him, Horatio unpacked in the orange glow of the sun setting over the backs of buildings that made up the university. Half of the room had been left entirely bare for him, the other half littered with methodical familiarity that the prince had organized some hours earlier. Much of it was new and crammed tightly together, unprepared for a space that was only about as big as a closet at the Kings’ estate. A smile nearly crept to Horatio’s lips over it, but a pain in his chest wouldn’t allow it. He heard footsteps far down the hall and made quick work of unpacking his boxes, all two of them. His side was still just as bare afterward, save for the sweaters in the closet now. It was hardly cold, but he shivered as he turned his key in the lock and snuck away into the stairwell. 

Wittenberg provided in its atmosphere, which was dappled with the colors of autumn and the complimentary reds of pre-semester school spirit, and it was objectively attractive even as the sun went down. Horatio knew it like an old friend by the time the light was gone, having found a bench to settle on for hours to read. He’d been there for a good collection of hours, the shadow of his dorm looming over him. Finishing just one more chapter had turned into two more, then three and finally, Horatio was on the last page. After heaving a sigh, he lingered on the sidewalk, staring up at the building at the window he knew to be connected to his room. The light was on. Keeping an eye on it, Horatio traded the book for his phone. As he held it up to his ear, the prince’s shadow darkened the frame of yellow behind the glass, and he hid among the trees. He shifted his weight from one foot to another. “Pick up, pick up...Hey, Marcellus. Are you on campus yet, or…?”

Marcellus’ voice came through on the other end, eventually, beyond a whole lot of shouting and explicit music. “Yeah? What the fuck is up? Horatio?” 

Wherever he was, he had to yell, and Horatio held his phone slightly away from himself before responding. “Do you have a couch I can stay on?”

“Oh, hell yeah, dude! We’re gonna get you proper college fucked up!”

“That’s fine, I just need--”

“I know a couple of guys from the gay union, I could introduce you! A little more Fireball, a little less of that constant, living book report shit you do, and you might get some action, am I right?”

“No, I’m fine. Really. I don’t need--”

Marcellus slurred something about his address and hung up. At some point in the conversation, the light from the dorm room had gone off. In fear of the resident venturing out to where he was, Horatio fled, spending his night in awkward drink among people of whom he was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with. He uttered a denial of his sexuality several times over the course of the following few days, unsure why. Discomfort. Couch arrangement included, but aside, he existed in discomfort, his only relief from it found in his classes once they began. 

There, Horatio sat in the front out of habit and held the first complete conversations he’d had in months, forgetting Denmark until the lapses in them left him to his thoughts. A week passed in this fashion, and in snippets of trying to study in the hellish space of Marcellus’ apartment, a constant venue of pseudo-frat activity. He grew accustomed to it, fond of certain classmates who he knew only by participation in discussion and not by name. Despite drinking against his insistence under Marcellus’ supervision, by his second friday, Horatio was able to actively look forward to the next hour and a half, ignoring his minor headache for the promise of philosophy.  He was, and then he heard the chair behind him shift, a pen click. A hand curled into the back of his cardigan.

“Can I borrow your notes?”

Horatio’s back straightened, pulling away from the bit of caught fabric. The prince’s voice sat warm in his ear. The prince’s voice. Something tightened in Horatio’s chest.

“Please?”

It wasn’t as if he hadn't heard it in months. True, it had fallen out of commonplace over the summer, but for the past few months, Horatio and Hamlet became acquaintances more on formality. They spoke directly to one another in an empty bastardization of their mode of conversation, attempting to the best of their ability to maintain the facade of a proper friendship. It had been civilly agreed upon that if their deterioration had been made more obvious, the both of them would suffer for it in terms of image. It was always image.

“Horatio?”

A shiver worked its way along Horatio’s spine. He unceremoniously tore a page out of his notebook and turned, feeling sufficiently secure in the thought that his face showed absolutely nothing. It surely did, in the very short seconds before he looked over the shoulder and saw the prince in a sweater that certainly wasn’t his own. Earbuds, sunglasses--which were annoyingly ornate--and Horatio’s sweater. Reflected back at him through the rounded lenses mounted loosely on Hamlet’s nose, Horatio saw himself fall apart into redness and embarrassment. In taking the paper, the prince’s fingers brushed his, and Horatio dropped the paper, whipping back around as he heard it drift to the floor. For the next twenty minutes, he sat in agony as the prince made it a point to remain active in classroom conversation, though lazy in his attention to what, specifically, the day’s lecture was on. Between general and unrelated statements on religion, he leaned forward again, returning to his hold on Horatio’s cardigan, which had faded among shifts in topic. “I didn’t realize you were here. What are you doing after this?” he whispered.

Horatio bit his lip. “What did you think, I decided not to come because of you? I'm studying,” he replied.

“I kind of thought that, yeah. We can study together. Where at?”

“It doesn't matter. I'll focus better alone.”

“Huh?”

“You, uh. You heard me.”

The grip tightened before Hamlet’s fingers uncurled and pulled away. He said nothing further, and when class ended, Horatio gathered his things and left with all the swiftness of a man being chased. He was half justified, seeing Hamlet step out into the sunlight while he struggled to unlock his bike. That was one of his preferred sweaters, blue with the diamond patterned strip across the middle. Hamlet waved. Horatio wasted precious time dropping his keys and having to pick them back up, backing his bike out of the tangle of others to mount it. Perhaps he made a crucial mistake in making eye contact. The prince called out to him. He pretended he didn't hear. The prince called again, perturbed by being so clearly ignored.

A month and half went by before Hamlet had essentially gotten over his illness, though Horatio was sure he had some part to play in the slow recovery. When he saw the other in class after being so long absent, he said something about being glad to see him that ultimately lacked substance. Hamlet gave him the wrong sort of smile, the one from TV and newspaper photos.

Looking over his shoulder, Horatio saw Hamlet now shrinking in the distance, his fragile form peeling the sweater off and tying it around his waist. He stood, stared and after rolling his shoulders, he began to run. Horatio was suddenly and horrifically reminded of his time spent waiting around for track practices to finish. Though he hadn’t seen the sight for months, Hamlet was now renewing his memory, gaining ground at a terrifying pace. In minutes, the prince had far proven any previous value he might have had to his high school team, coasting alongside Horatio’s bicycle. 

“Slow down,” he said. 

Horatio wouldn’t. He pretended to become very focused on the road ahead.

“I didn’t know you were here,” Hamlet continued. 

He had an irritating amount of stamina, keeping the pace he’d built as Horatio struggled to do the same. Similarly, Horatio struggled to respond. “My stuff was in the dorm room, you fucking asshole.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s my fucking sweater. Did you not notice my clothes in the closet?”

“Your--,” Hamlet looked down at the fabric at his hips. If he wasn’t already flushed from running, he might have established a deep blush. “I thought they were yours that you left at my house.”

“And the bedding? And notebooks?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t been thinking about it that much. I haven’t been staring at the other side of the room. I’ve been busy.”

“Oh, doing what?”

“College, Horatio! I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been at college! I love it, by the way.”

“I love it, too.”

“Right? You know Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are like thirty minutes out? They’re staying with Gil’s nan or something.”

Coming upon a steep incline in the path, Horatio knew he was reaching a point where he had to give in. Against his will, he had to slow, eventually stopping to wipe the sweat building on his face. Hamlet came to a halt, chest rising and falling in an imitable fashion that made the other feel a bit better. Any proof that the prince was a human person who could experience proper fatigue somehow brought Horatio a bit of internal repose. It certainly wasn’t anything to smile over, but the ease was there all the same. The smile would be prevented. “So, you’ve been having fun with them?” Horatio asked, awkward, cold.

“To an extent,” Hamlet replied. “Not  _ that _ much fun. I don’t know if it literally is, but it kind of  _ feels  _ like third-wheeling with them. Which is…” He shrugged.

“You like being the center of attention.”

“What?”

‘What’ was right. Horatio felt the heat in his ears. His lips pressed into a thin line as he regretted words he should have reasonably had control over. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “You’re just used to being the most important person in the room, that’s not your fault,” he continued--shit, what? He didn’t mean to continue.

Hamlet put a hand on his hip. “What?” he repeated.

“You heard me, Oh High-and-Mighty. Mr. God Complex. Your majesty. My lord.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I bet it's been rough on you, my lord. A whole two seasons of having people fawn all over you in my place, I bet that's just the worst.”

“Shut up.”

“Is that an order, sir?”

Though his breathing seemed to regulate, Hamlet’s face had settled a deep red, tainting his cheeks and ears so horribly that Horatio found himself inexplicably delighted. He felt terrible and guilty, sure, but he was delighted. The prince, on the other hand, thrust a his hands forward, stopping the growing and cruel smile building on the other’s lips with a fast grip on his face. There, Hamlet kissed him in a rough press which brought their teeth uncomfortably together, and he refused to let go afterward until he was pushed. “I missed you. Stop being mad at me. I'm sorry,” he said.

Again, Horatio’s chest hurt, and he looked at the prince with eyes wide, still feeling the pain of the grip in the hollows of his cheeks. One of his hands found a place to rest, hugging loosely around the other arm. “You can't just do whatever you want, you know,” he mumbled, gaze falling down toward his shoes. “And it's been months, sir.”

“I know. I didn't know what to say. I saw you in class all week, and...I didn’t know what to say. I shouldn't have said anything in the first place. About you. Or me.”

“I should’ve--,” Horatio paused, grabbing tightly on his sleeve; there wasn’t enough fabric, and his fingers fell slack. “--I should've said something. Not about the whole thing with your dad, about...the other thing.”

The proper phrasing for ‘the other thing’ wouldn't come. It floated constant in Horatio’s head, often and most vividly when he waited too long to do the dishes some months before, and he spent an hour doing them by the dim light of the bulb over the stove. He saw his reflection in old glass, the soapy water on the verge of growing cold. ‘The other thing’ formed on his lips, and reaching into the browning murkiness, he cut himself. In his lack of attention, he had brought a knife to the surface by the wrong end, and he stepped away to wrap the cut in the damp towel hanging from the stove’s handle. Hamlet wouldn’t actually kill himself.

Months had passed, and after all, there he was, hands finding his pockets. He hadn’t killed himself. Still, the guilt sitting dormant in Horatio would not and could not be properly assuaged. “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

“No, it’s fine,” Hamlet replied, though his expression had darkened considerably from what it was. “I ended up...speaking to Father about it. And we had a family meeting. And we decided it’s silly for me to worry so much because, reasonably, it’s a phase that’ll pass, and therapy is really just going to draw a whole lot of unnecessary attention to something that’s not really an issue. Which makes sense.” He sounded as if he truly believed it did, though when he attempted a smile, it betrayed him, leading immediately to his need to change subjects. “I still need to finish  _ Anna Karenina _ .”

Horatio allowed a grin. “It’s been a year, my lord.”

“I didn’t want to finish it without my poor servant ever. Cut it out.”

“Would it please you to pick up where we left off, sir?”

“I’d like us to retire to my chambers, turn a few pages and see where it takes us.”

“It would be my pleasure, my lord.”

Horatio bowed, received a gentle shove and shared a laugh with the other as he stumbled back against his bicycle. A hand fell on the seat, squeezing there as it began to shake, if only lightly. Yes, this exchange had assuaged nothing. It was less a pleasure than it was a duty. Still, as the two of them strolled back to a building Horatio had only dared to set his eyes on a few times in the past week, though it was still early, the sky accommodated them with the jubilant blue of the afternoon. 

By the time they had braved numerous flights of stairs,  _ Anna Karenina  _ had been long forgotten in lieu of their conversations on nothing. It had begun with books, as only their most pleasant discussions always had, trailing quickly into general political theory, then to philosophy, most finally settling on Hamlet’s laundry. Halfway through a thought on Voltaire, he was halted by Horatio’s extension of an arm and ultimate attention to the hamper. “Don’t stare unless you plan to help me,” Hamlet groaned, tossing his bag onto his chair and adding Horatio’s sweater to the already overflowing heap.

“You really can’t…?”

“No, I couldn’t figure it out,” he said indignantly.

Horatio ducked his head into the closet, then back out. “Do you have any detergent? Dryer sheets?” The look he received in return was utterly blank. “We can probably borrow some.”

“No. I can’t let anyone here know that I don’t know how.”

Horatio sighed. “You’re a carbon copy of your mother, have I ever told you that?” Of course he hadn’t; he’d never been this bold. He didn’t know what he was doing. He was tired of being afraid.

Hamlet was reasonably livid. “You take that back,” he hissed.

Horatio shrugged. “You are too conscious of appearances, my lord. You are not likely to fall out of favor with the peasantry as easily as you may have come to believe.”

Neither of them really knew what they were doing. Hamlet locked the door and drew the blinds. “But soft, how can I put any degree of faith in you as their liaison when you’ve grown so constant in my court? You favor me?”

“I would hope you would thirst for no further favors, my lord.”

“Thus, I drink my fill,” Hamlet replied, taking Horatio’s cheeks into his hands and pulling him downward the few inches it took for a soft, drawn-out kiss. 

They parted all of an inch, and Horatio snorted. “Really? ‘Thus I drink my fill’? That’s really dorky, come on.”

Hamlet frowned, one hand finding its way downward. “Don’t give me that, you’re half-hard already, you fucking nerd. I’ll go further and have thee most directly undone.”

Through a string of laughter, Horatio leaned into the other’s touch, pressing into another kiss. He paused. “...You’re sure this is fine? You’re cool with this, actually?”

In muted, midday darkness of the shaded bedroom, Hamlet sighed. He wrapped his arms around Horatio’s shoulders, resting his forehead on the other’s shoulder. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had this argument. I want to make you...feel good, I guess, but…,”

“But…?”

“Don’t get mad.”

Horatio took his turn at cupping the other’s face. “I was already mad. That was all summer. I’m not going to get mad again for at least a little bit,” he insisted, pecking at Hamlet’s forehead. 

Again, a sigh. “Okay, I hate it. I hate it. I like making out, and I like it when you get all excited and whatever, but then, we’ve got to take our clothes off, and everything’s all weird and kind of sticky, and I don’t like going down on Ophelia, and whenever we do stuff, it kind of hurts, and I don’t like all the...the sex noises. I don’t know. Like, fleshy noises. And I tried talking about that, too, with Father and uncle Claudius. Not intentionally, I just ended up mentioning how it didn’t interest me, and then, uncle Claudius laughed and said I’d get it once it happened for me, and Father agreed with him, but the thing is, it did happen. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong. Don’t be mad. I can still...I don’t know. We can do this weird, elizabethan foreplay thing.”

Horatio brought his arms around Hamlet’s waist, shaking his head as his face sunk into the crook of the other’s neck. “Is that what you meant when you said you weren’t gay?” Horatio whispered, closing his eyes to the image of the prince’s face from the month of their initial argument. “We don’t. We don’t have to do the elizabethan foreplay thing. We don’t have to do anything.”

Hamlet’s grip around Horatio tightened. “Sorry. I don’t know,” he said.

“No, you’re really fine. I feel kind of like an asshole for what I said when you were sick. We don’t have to do elizabethan foreplay. We don’t even have to do modern foreplay, it’s cool--you still like me, though?”

Hamlet laughed, kissing along Horatio’s jaw. “I love you. If you really want to do some elizabethan stuff, we can do that. I can help you finish while we pretend it’s 1603.”

“Oh my God, we don’t have to. We can just--”

“We can just make out while we pretend it’s 1603.”

Horatio broke into a fit, holding fast to the prince to keep himself grounded. “If you want to pretend it’s 1603 that badly, you can admit it!” he giggled.

They sunk to the floor, lost in hysterics and phrases both original and stolen from classical texts. In some pattern of this, and of exploring each other’s mouths, they had somehow circled back around to their talk of philosophy. Then, again of nothing, and as the welcoming world outside began its descent into night time, they settled into the same bed. 

Entering into a brief moment of quiet, and made alert in the dark, Horatio was reminded of the presence of Hamlet’s earbuds, which had remained in place for the duration of the day. He pulled at the one unprotected by the caverns of the bedding, and Hamlet’s eyes came open. Shostakovich. His fatigue came out in the shapes of shadows on his face as he reached to replace the earbud. “I missed you. Did I say that?” he mumbled, moving ever closer in an already small space, resting his face against Horatio’s chest.

“I missed you, too, my lord.”

Their lips met. Flesh. Heat. Tongue. “Let’s not make a running joke of that,” Hamlet breathed.

Guilt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter may very well be the last?


	16. Ides of March

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preceding any cases of regicide, suicide, homicide, or the related, Hamlet King is the only son of the richest family in Denmark county, known for its cornfield demon sightings and old fashioned family traditions. Horatio has always been there for him.

Having long grown used to the hum of the car along the bare country road leading out of the county, Horatio was wrenched out of his previous drowsiness by a pothole that could have been easily avoided. As his chin fell out of its resting place in his palm, Horatio gave Marcellus a look from the passenger’s seat. Ignored, he stretched and readjusted, finding the corn along the road outside to be the same as it had been since whenever they had started their journey--whenever that was. Horatio felt around either pocket, his search coming up empty. “I think I forgot my phone,” he said.

“That's rough,” Marcellus replied, sarcastic at best and fiddling with the radio. “How’s your lord supposed to keep tabs on you, now?”

“He'll know,” Horatio said quickly, unsure of why; his words wouldn't fit right in his mouth, and when he uttered them, they sounded distant.

Marcellus stared for a moment before he began to laugh. From whenever, they had sped up considerably, and the nature of the car’s surroundings blended together into simple colors, fields of brown, orange and gold. “We better hurry, then,” Marcellus said, grinning wide and changing back and forth between two radio stations. 

Horatio heard Shostakovich, and then his eyes travel up into the road, where he saw headlights. Like cogs jamming in a great machine, he felt his heart stop, and his body froze to where he was unable to get a word of panic out before impact.

In a conglomeration of tires screeching and some part of both vehicle compacting like empty soda cans, Horatio’s vision went dark. It returned to him in a blur, as he was made aware of the world again by the pool of heat teeming from what could only be a deep gash on his forehead. Disoriented, he tracked the flow of his own blood along cracks in the window glass, and it pained him to crane his neck enough to catch sight of Marcellus, still, in the driver’s seat. With a stiff arm, Horatio moved to unbuckle himself, struggling then to push out of the car and into the dirt. Marcellus’ name formed on his lips, but he failed to call in out. The wreckage held his attention for a fleeting moment before he was drawn along to the untampered edge of the cornfield. 

The stalks were tan and still, and though his legs cried out at the effort, Horatio was compelled toward the depths. He stood, bled and hugged himself, taking a few unsteady steps into the corn. He wobbled until he reached a path, the road behind him lost. Ahead of him, though his vision was dotted with stars, he saw only what he had, for some reason, expected. From the horizon, the prince came toward him, lantern in hand. It was broken, smashed almost to pieces, but the bulb persisted in a yellow glow which obscured his face in shadow--Horatio wasn’t when and for how long it had become dark. 

“Did you ditch Marcellus or did he ditch you?” Hamlet asked, stopping and standing at a distance.

“I ditched him,” said Horatio; he was suddenly very cold. “I’d like to go inside. I don't like it out here.”

Hamlet turned and made a gesture that Horatio follow. Silently, aching, he extended an arm, wrapping his fingers in the fabric on the back of the prince’s shirt. He shuffled along behind, vision dipping in and out. Hamlet gave in nothing in the way of keeping up, travelling at an even pace despite the requests that he wait which died in whispers on edges of Horatio’s lips. He looked back occasionally, cheeks bathed in light. “We’re nearly there,” he said, repeating it several times over as they travelled further down the path.

“But the house is the other way,” Horatio replied, though when he looked for it over his shoulder, his head swam, and he could see nothing.

“It’ll be fine,” said the prince. He wouldn’t slow, and his voice began to sound distant. “Horatio?”

“Yes?”

“Do you believe man is inherently good or inherently evil?”

Horatio drew the back of his hand across his face, intent on removing the sweat he thought to be there. There was only blood. “Good,” he said.

“That would mean that we choose to do evil things. We allow pain.”

“The house is the other way, my lord.”

Hamlet turned. The lantern shone on his face. “Have you ever seen any demons, Horatio?”

The light brightened until it overtook Horatio’s sight completely. His eyes squeezed tightly shut, and under the distinct feeling that he was falling, he jolted upward, opening them again. Just shy of hitting his head on the ceiling, he awoke. 

There was barely a foot’s space on either side in the dorm bed, but still Horatio’s first instinct was to search for the prince in the loose tangle of blankets, pulled apart by his unrest. The search came up empty, and for a moment, Horatio sat still to calm himself. His chest eventually stopped heaving, and he got a better sense for his surroundings, a room that had long grown familiar to him. Home. From beneath the loft, Horatio became aware of the presence of the desk lamp, still on. He wrapped himself in a thin blanket and climbed down, finding the prince at his desk through the bed’s slotted frame. As Horatio neared him, he turned. “I thought you were asleep,” he said.

“Come to bed with me,” Horatio mumbled, eyes straining in the light.

Hamlet pushed his bangs out of his face, staring into his laptop screen. “I’m almost done with this. What time is it?”

“Like three in the morning. Come to bed.”

Hamlet groaned, stretching in place. “I’m almost done,” he insisted.

Horatio leaned over him, wrapping his arms around the prince’s shoulders and pressing a kiss into his hair. He looked down at the screen, struck from his languid state by what he assumed to be a product of it. A document was indeed open, but the jumble of characters within it made up paragraph upon paragraph of nonsense, like the work of a child pretending to type. Horatio frowned. “What are you working on?” he asked.

“Just...just…,” Hamlet trailed off, reaching out to scroll through his work. “I don’t know,” he said, brow furrowing. 

Horatio kissed him again, rubbing his shoulders. “Come to bed,” he said again.

Rising slowly, eyes still on his screen, Hamlet nodded. “I can’t find my earbuds,” he said absently, allowing Horatio to take him into his arms and lead him to bed.

“We can look for them in the morning,” Horatio mumbled, following the other up the ladder.

They settled together, and pulling close as he had made a habit of doing, Hamlet fell asleep first, cloaked with the warmth of Horatio’s arm over him. In his sleep, he shivered.

In the morning, their search for the earbuds came up empty, thus opening the space for the prince’s irritation to set in. He’d taken all of his belongings off of his shelves, and in lieu of breakfast, he sat on the floor among them. “We can go buy some new ones tonight,” Horatio offered, now intent on getting the prince dressed and headed to class.

Hamlet scrubbed at his hair. “No--I don’t know. No.  _ Anna Karenina _ . Let’s get Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and do  _ Anna Karenina _ ,” he said.

Horatio crouched beside him. “What if we went to the store to get some, and then we did  _ Anna Karenina _ ?”

“I don’t care, I just want it to happen.  _ Anna Karenina  _ tonight.”

_ Anna Karenina  _ had long since devolved to exclude the actual book, solely pertaining to the act of getting wasted and trying to remember the book. It was never a suggestion, already reaching the status of a plan upon its first mention. Still, Horatio futily acted to try and prevent it. “What if we watched a movie instead? Have you ever seen  _ Moonrise Kingdom _ ?” He wasn’t fond of  _ Anna Karenina _ . 

“Horatio.”

Horatio sighed, intent but unable to defy the inevitable. He pulled Hamlet into a hug, eventually coaxing him up and off the floor, into the closet to get dressed. From their, they made their way slowly downstairs, out into a drizzle that was too light to justify going back for a coat. They took their time, slipping under trees and awnings as often as the campus would allow them. Leaves fallen and dredged with water passed under their feet. From one street corner to another, Hamlet made the repeated motion of searching his pockets and pulling at his earlobes. His expression was dark, and Horatio stole glances at it when he thought it would go unnoticed. “I had a weird dream last night,” he tried, looking into the prince’s face for some change, receiving nothing.

“Oh?”

“I, um, got into a car accident. And then I started wandering in this cornfield, and you were there. I don’t know.”

Hamlet nodded with the bare minimum of acknowledgement. His eyes were fixed on a spot of nothing in the distance. “I had my sunday dream, which I thought was weird, because it’s wednesday.”

“Sunday dream?”

Finally, Hamlet looked at him. “I forgot. I only tell Ophelia about my dreams. Sorry.”

“You can tell me about your dreams. Pretend I’m Ophelia.”

Hamlet’s eyes narrowed. “You’re too tall.”

Horatio took on a slouch. “What’s your sunday dream?”

They stopped beneath a large, leaning tree in view of the traffic light, waiting for it to change. “It’s kind of like my friday dream,” Hamlet replied, tugging at his earlobe, looking away again. “It’s not important. I’m usually in the dining room, and everyone’s there at the table, but we aren’t really eating anything. Father’s reading something, Mother’s just sort of minding her own business. After a minute or so, my face starts to itch, and when I go to say something, I remember Yorick’s standing in the corner, where it’s kind of dark even though the lights are on. Every time I start to say something, he starts shaking his head really violently, like that’s a terrible idea. But I keep trying to do it. And he just stands there, quietly going berserk over it, and when I finally get a word in, I’m looking right at him, and then, I immediately start to choke. Nobody at the table ever does anything, and I start trying to cough up whatever’s in my throat when Father starts to stare at me, too, with Yorick. Then, when I think I’m about to pass out, I start spitting up a bunch of...I don’t know. A bunch of black, sticky bile. And Father and Yorick look like this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. And that happens for another five to ten minutes before I wake up.”

“Jesus Christ, you have that every sunday?”

Hamlet rubbed at his eyes. “And wednesday now, I guess,” he said, stepping out into the rain again as the light flickered from red to green.

“Are all of your dreams like that?” Horatio asked, pursuing him.

They paused at the other side of the road, where their paths would divulge until they met up again for philosophy. “Sometimes, I dream about somewhere warm and sunny. With plenty of old buildings,” Hamlet responded, offering the other a glance over his shoulder.

“Is that true?”

The prince forced himself to laugh. “No!” he called, wandering off into a heavier rainfall.

Horatio would wait for him there, following the end of his own class, only to stand some ten minutes in the rain by himself, and to attend the next lecture alone. His phone buzzed in the midst of it, and he felt terrible for being disappointed in the words on screen. It was only Ophelia.

 

**_miss you guys!!!!!! AND hamlet won’t text me back_** ** _  
_** ** _so not only do i miss you guys but im Pissed Off_** ** _  
_** **** _A Little_ , sent 1:10 PM

**Haha yeah, I’m sorry. It’s been a rough day,** **  
** **I think.** , sent 1:11 PM

**_( ・◇・)？_ ** , sent 1:11 PM

**He lost his earbuds, and we both had some bad** ****  
**dreams (he said he had his ‘Sunday Dream’?).** **  
** **Then his dad called, and they fought? So** , sent 1:12 PM

**_Yikes holy fuck_ ** , sent 1:12 PM

**_his sunday dream? thats some bad shit. havent_ ** **_  
_ ** **_seen his dad all day though._ ** , sent 1:13 PM

**_That’s not really that weird i guess. he is an_ ** **_  
_ ** **_Adult with a job._ ** , sent 1:13 PM

**Things have been less than good between them lately.** **  
** **I don’t like it. It’s scary.** , sent 1:14 PM

**_yeeeeaaah. we were swapping many a vent_ ** ****_  
_ **_text but my dad started talking about making_ ** ****_  
_ **_random checks on my phone after the whole_ ** **_  
_ ** ****_mono thing (Ò 皿 Ó ╬)_ , sent 1:14 PM

**Sorry** , sent 1:14 PM

**_ur good bby it just dealt a blow to the Hamlet’s_ ** **_  
_ ** **_Emotional Outlets Department_ ** , sent 1:15 PM

**_promise you’ll be the Not Mess of the triumvirate_ ** **_  
_ ** **_while im indisposed. ur my heir_ ** , sent 1:15 PM

**That’s a lot of responsibility** , sent 1:15 PM

**But I will try my best.** , sent 1:15 PM

**_and we can get naked in the sauna over winter break!_ ** **_  
_ ** **_so i’ll see you both then!!!!!!!! ( ˘ ³˘)♥_ ** , sent 1:16 PM

**See you soon.** , sent 1:16 PM

 

Aligned with prediction, Horatio found Hamlet drunk on the dorm room floor by the time he returned home. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sat in desk chairs on either side of him, moving to hide a bottle of the cheap stuff the moment they heard the door open. Horatio heard his name, preceded by the word ‘only’, before he heard a greeting from either of them. He discarded his bag and joined the prince on the floor, finding upon closer inspection that he was crying. Rosencrantz offered the alcohol, passing it to Guildenstern when he was ignored. “It’s been a rough afternoon,” he said, indicating the prince.

“One can usually infer that from the act of skipping class to get drunk before noon,” Horatio replied, pushing Hamlet’s hair out of his face to another wave of tears.

“Fuck off,” Hamlet cried, only to apologize immediately after.

“Thanks for sitting with him, Antsy. Gil.”

The pair saluted. “It’s kind of funny,” said Guildenstern. “We prevented a pretty messy voicemail to Mr. King. Like champions of justice.”

“Hell yeah,” said Rosencrantz; he reached across the room to give the other a high five.

Hamlet held out an arm for the bottle that Guildenstern wouldn’t allow within his reach. “I can call my own damn dad,” he slurred. “You don't know anything. I know things.”

“I know you do,” Horatio hummed, pulling Hamlet into his lap as if he was a pet trying to get out the front door. Hamlet settled his head against Horatio’s neck and quieted; standard procedure. Horatio returned his attention to the duo. “I need you guys to go to the store,” he said. “I need you to buy me some earbuds.” As Guildenstern raised his hand to protest, Horatio took the bottle from him. “As champions of justice, I need you to do this.”

It took even less to convince them than when they were children. Horatio watched the both of them slink out into the hall with Hamlet’s eyes trailing them over the folds of Horatio’s shirt. “I feel like dyin’,” he said, voice muffled by fabric.

Horatio shook his head, running his hand through the prince’s hair and kissing his forehead. He searched the still present mess on the floor for the TV remote and strained to reach it without readjusting how he sat. On turning the TV on, he skipped quickly past the news; it was always on the news, always when he was in the mood for anything but. “I’d be happy to get drunk with you if you had the ability to drink without getting sad,” he said absently, stopping on the cooking channel.

“There’s too much to be sad about, there’s…,” Hamlet trailed off as he was partially distracted by the development of a large fire at so-and-so’s station on screen, “...There’s so much goin’ on in my head. And everybody keeps...try’na talk to me.”

“Everyone?”

Hamlet gestured vaguely. “Dad’s not proud. ‘M doing a bad job. I dunno. Demons. Where’re my earbuds?”

“Antsy and Gilly are buying new ones.”

“Fuck.”

So-and-so burnt their pine nuts, and Horatio clicked his tongue. It was never a good idea to put them in the oven when one couldn’t reasonably keep track of them. He was trying to distract himself, and the failings of the Food Network were only helping to stress him out more quickly. He bit his lip as so-and-so threw the pine nuts in the trash, thus compelling Horatio to turn the channel back to the news to try and escape the dread it caused him. “They’ll be back soon. What about demons?”

“Have you ever seen any demons, Horatio?”

“What?”

Horatio muted the TV, startling Hamlet more so than it might’ve if he was sober. It was hurriedly unmuted, then muted again while Horatio watched the movement of his own fingers to ensure that was indeed awake. Loud. Quiet. Loud. He was awake. “No,” he responded finally.

“Are you lyin’?”

Quiet. “No.”

“It’s not even hard,” Hamlet muttered, unimpressed and irreverent. He pushed away from Horatio with all the fluidity of someone wading away in a pool. His back found the side of his desk, his foot finding a flat place to rest on Horatio’s chest. “We should go find ‘em,” he said.

Though it came from what was likely little more than a drunken musing, Horatio found the notion deeply unsettling. “We’re at Wittenberg, my lord. No demons here,” he said, nervous in spite of his effort not to be.

“What? No,” Hamlet laughed, immediately starting to cry. “What d’you mean you’ve never seen any?”

Horatio took hold of the prince’s foot, moving it steadily off of himself. “I don’t think demons are real,” he replied, leaning forward to dry the prince’s cheeks with a bit of thumb and shirt sleeve.

A dam broke open. Hamlet began to wail. “They are too! I saw--I--I’m not lying! I’m not lying this time!”

“I’m not saying you are, I’m just saying I don’t think they’re real. Demons are...figurative.”

Hamlet shook his head, grabbing hold of Horatio’s wrist with sudden ferocity. “No, I saw them! I saw them! I heard them!”

Horatio leaned away, afraid. The only light that stretched across their faces came from the TV, flashing in blues and greens, the occasional white. It was muted. Horatio could hardly hear himself. “When did you see them?” he asked.

Hamlet drew his grip up to Horatio’s hand, bringing the knuckles to his lips. He squeezed too tightly, trying to reign in his escaping measures of breath. His attention was diverted to the purely internal as he sat and seemed to calm himself; he wouldn’t look up again until he succeeded, rubbing his eyes dry with his free hand.  “Dad said it doesn’t matter,” he replied, having worked himself into fatigue. He sniffed, rubbed his eyes again, though they were waterless. “‘M pretty scary, aren’t I?”

“Are you?” Horatio responded, and he leaned in, though he was terrified, taking the prince back into his arms. He wanted things to be like they always were.

The prince fell slack in his grasp, eyes falling closed. Now so close to Horatio’s ear, his voice came quietly: “I still feel trapped. We’re not even in Denmark. I don’t understand,” he said.

“What do you propose we do about it?” Horatio whispered.

Against the heat of his neck, he felt Hamlet smile, afterward feeling a kiss there. “We should run away.”

Before Horatio could ask where, he was urged backward by the gentle force of the prince’s palms. His head met the meager area of the carpet, and he was held fast at his shoulders, Hamlet’s face hovering a foot from his own. A reflection of the TV shone brilliantly on his tearstained cheeks. 

“We could go somewhere and never come back,” he said.

Horatio blushed. “You’re drunk still.”

“No, I’ve got the perfect place for you.”

“My lord.”

“Somewhere warm and sunny and old,” and with each word further, Hamlet leaned in until his lips were just shy of where they needed to be, touching down into soft exploration at the next utterance, at ‘Rome’. 

A good sense of time and place had been lost by the time Horatio was given a moment to breath. “Rome,” he echoed, laying still and feeling heavy beneath the prince’s weight; he thought briefly on how he’d grown too used to the mixture of worry and need churning low in his stomach. Briefly, as his breaths were again. 

“We’ll go and never come back.”

Briefly, as was their time spent together, interrupted by Hamlet’s phone again, buzzing from somewhere in the mess. With a vicious moan, the prince searched for the source of the noise, knocking a stack of books over in the process. He kept a hand planted firmly on Horatio’s chest, and when he found the device, he looked at it in rancor. While he wouldn’t read the name aloud, it played at his lips and danced in his eyes. 

Of course it was his father again. 

He turned the phone over and left it on the ground, reclining back against the wall to seethe. Horatio sat up with him, taking Hamlet’s face into his hands. They made a fair attempt at ignoring the buzz in favor of another string of kisses, although their talk of Rome was lost. Taking the matter of escape into his own hands, Horatio searched through feel alone for the remote. The phone would buzz, and he would turn the TV up louder so as to drown it out. For a moment, briefly, they would be together, but Rome had fallen.

By Horatio’s own action, the sound of the news came in gradually unbearable, mimicking the slow approaching form of a swarm of locusts. Horatio turned to look directly at it, and as he did, he felt the prince’s arms fall loose down his waist. On turning back, he saw the prince’s eyes transfixed, wide and dry. Without looking away, Hamlet’s hand trailed along the ground, coming to the phone again and bringing it, shaking, to his ear. Not his father’s voice, but his mother’s came through from the other end. From both the TV and the conversation which were neither his, Horatio heard. 

The King had died.

As was his habit with phone conversations, Hamlet rose to go out into the hall, only to be caught by the hand and halted. He finished his conversation without another movement and without the use of even a single full sentence, as if the words wouldn't come. The moment his mother hung up with the promise to send someone to fetch him, his legs gave out. 

Horatio reached soundlessly for the TV remote, keeping his eyes on the news story that seemed to repeat ad infinitum. With the absent action of finding the power button, it clipped to black, and the room lost its only light source. However, free of the droning noise, as Horatio’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he matched a rapid rise and fall in the prince’s chest to the sound of his unsteady breathing. Horatio squeezed a hand tightly around a collection of Hamlet’s fingers, feeling the both of their pulses in a confusing, throbbing combination. A stagnant minute passed by before Hamlet’s gaze at the TV screen broke away into one struggling to pick detail out of the shadows settling on Horatio’s face. He sobbed, and no sooner did Horatio reach forward, free hand finding the frame of the prince’s phone rather than the prince himself. While he didn’t feel entirely, consciously connected to his own actions, he sought, in a few short taps, the ever-present and recently unused mass of Hamlet’s playlist. He selected at random and raised the music to the highest volume, and in the room it gave him for discretion, Hamlet’s own volume rose in conjunction. He leaned into Horatio, pressing the fresh wetness of his cheeks and eyes into a pattern they had shared casually between laundry loads, and in the folds of that fabric he cried out as if he'd broken something.

Shostakovich. Piano concerto number two. Opus 102, second section. Adante.

Horatio whispered and repeated something to the effect that everything would be alright, or--for whatever reason his mouth allowed the notion to escape--it would all go back to being the way it always was in no time. Rome would wait for them.

The roman would wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of sort of based on my very favorite post on tumblr.com by the-mad-prince-of-denmark. i don't know how to put links in these McFreakin things but maybe I'll figure it out. just know that it's some good midwestern shit for now, for my good midwestern self, and i hope at least one (1) other person likes it like i do.


End file.
